Series: Ladies who create ~ #1 Florine Stettheimer

The holidays are over and now I can ease into the new year. I find myself percolating about women who create (I do this most of the time), and the ways they choose to express themselves.   My goal is to highlight some individuals in a series of blog posts that focus on women artists, their craft, and who they are in the art community.

I was fortunate to visit two east coast cities during the holiday season; Boston in December and New York City in January.  Both provided insight on my own creative process as well as shifting of gears in the motivation department. 

I am excited to see where my art process leads me this year and how many interesting findings, I can investigate for Glass Canvas to share with you. 

Let’s be brave and jump into 2025 together…, starting with artist Florine Stettheimer, 1871-1944, American, New York.

I was not familiar with her or her work before and upon learning about her I quickly and in an almost frantic way wanted to know more.  So, you can imagine my joy in sharing her work with you. 

One of the best surprises I came across in NYC was at the Metropolitan Museum.  I had already decided to write my January blog on Florine Stettheimer. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across four of her works in gallery 902. 

The artworks are big, beautiful, and lined up beside each other taking up an entire wall.   Her series Cathedrals depicts her view of New York that highlight social, culture, and economic images of the late 1920’s, 1930’s, and early 1940’s.  The New Yorker author, Adam Gopnik, writes about how her work captures New Yorks “the luxury and ecstasy”.

The four works on view are:

The Cathedrals of Broadway, 1929

The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue, 1931

The Cathedrals of Wall Street, 1939

The Cathedrals of Art, 1942

All four works are oil on canvas, five feet in width, four feet in length, and beautifully framed in gold.  They all have a similar palette of soft pink, red, blue, greens, and yellow.  I find the most interesting theme in all four is her ability to invite us into the scene. 

As I stood in front of the each of the Cathedral works, I was transported into each of her time periods, thoughts, opinions, and into the” happenings.”  I found myself taken out of the Met and amid political, economic, and social metamorphosis.

This idea is reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s “happenings” (1963-1987). I imagine Stettheimer as the OG of creating “happenings” but rather than than attending a happening, they make you want to enter the work and be a part of the scene. She created the scenes of what she saw the city to be as an invitation to the viewers to join her.    

I love it when artwork coaxes me to think, feel, create, and love while being transported to another place & time.  She nailed it!

As the holiday season comes to an end I long to make it last a bit longer. I love Christmas & winter.  I also love the Jazz Age and New York City. The trips to Boston and NYC were book ends to the Christmas season.

It is always so lovely to spend the holiday soaking up the cold and art. Which is why reading about Stettheimer’s “Christmas” painting on the Avant.Arte Instagram I was smitten with her work and so lovely to see her work in person. 

Although I didn’t get to see her Christmas painting I feel lucky to have seen the others. Her Christmas piece feels like Christmas to me.  I fell in love with the artwork and soaked up the nostalgia this painting evokes.

This artwork is what I think of as Christmas and New York City.  This painting is crisp in its color palette, and in the depictions of the characters.  I am in awe of the way she could create the feelings of winter.  This artwork is in a similar color palette as the Cathedrals series.  The clarity, balance, and detail she expresses in this vignette style while using such soft colors is magical.

The soft colors of green, yellow, and pink are not the “normal” colors one thinks of for Christmas.  When the viewer looks closer there are all the symbols of Christmas in NYC in the 30’s & 40’s.  She transported me, again to a different time while also creating those nostalgic feelings about Christmas and Winter.  I Love It!

This artwork is on view at Yale University and The Jewish Museum wrote a lovely description which includes the word “dreamy” about this artwork in 2017; I encourage you to read if you love it as much as I do.

All her works have a “dreamy” aesthetic while the depiction of the city is spot on.  The viewer recognizes immediately the characters and the settings immediately.  She has a way with femininity and whimsy that I personally have never seen before.  

In February 2022, Vogue Magazine published an article about Stettheimer, titled “A New Biography Exhibits the Prolific, Cutting-Edge Life of Artist Florine Stettheimer.” While the article is about Stettheimer it is also about Barbara Bloemink who wrote an biographical dissertation about Stettheimer.  

The article is terrific and again gives a real-life example of woman artist who was paving the way toward breaking the “glass canvas.”   She never married, exhibited her work in her lifetime which let me remind you was the early 20^th century, and was by no means, meek just look at her portrait in the Vogue article.  

 “In 1915, when she was in her 40s, she painted what is said to be the first nude self-portrait by a female artist. Bloemink goes into great detail describing both the cultural context of the day (and why this painting would have been so utterly shocking)”  

A New Biography Exhibits the Prolific, Cutting-Edge Life of Artist Florine Stettheimer
By Grace Edquist
February 8, 2022

I realize more and more that women were always pushing boundaries and creating spaces for themselves it was just harder and less out in the open.  I am excited and delighted to learn about these women and to share their stories with you.

There is so much more to learn about this relationship and Stettheimer’s relationship to Georgia O’Keeffe.  As you might remember from an earlier post Stieglitz and O’Keeffe were married.

If you want to learn more about art history, artworks, and artists I can highly recommend Smarthistory.  They have a channel on YouTube, and if you’d like to continue learning about Florine Stettheimer check out Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, a six-minute video describing the painting and some background of the relationship between Stettheimer and Stieglitz.

Until next time on @glasscanvas!

Instagram – @heartmailstudios

See you in a few weeks- M.E.