Existing comment:
Beulah R , Bettersworth -- Christopher Street, Greenwich Village (1934):
A wintry corner of Greenwich Village lives in this painting as Beulah Bettersworth knew it when she and her husband inhabited 95 Christopher Street, a block away. Closely observed details draw the viewing into the painting to join Bettersworth's neighbors hurrying through the slushy snow, catching a whiff of tobacco from the cigar store in the foreground. Snow melts from the roof of St. Veronica's Catholic Church, whose towers are visible under the Ninth Avenue "L" station. The elevated train station had been an elegant adaptation of a Swiss chalet when it was built in 1867, but by Bettersworth's time it was an aging relic soon to be torn down. Like the rusting "L", the famous bohemian artistic colony that had enlivened Greenwich Village in the early twentieth century faded as the decades passed. Yet artists like Bettersworth still found homes there and with the advent of the Depression, low rents attracted a new generation of poverty-stricken young poets and painters to the Village's storied garrets. Perhaps the colorful aura of the Village appealed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who chose this modest canvas to hang in the White House. |