On Rivington Street
Jerome Myers (1867-1940), On Rivington Street, c. 1910, colored etching, signed in pencil lower right. In very good condition, with margins, 6 1/4 x 7 3/4, the sheet 9 1/4 x 10 3/8 inches, printed on a cream wove paper, archival matting.
A fine impression of this rarely encountered print, with the colors fresh, printed in brown, red, yellow, orange, two shades of green. This print shows no signs of having been editioned.
Myers printed his color prints personally, using different plates for the coloring. Myers’s artistry, and printing skill, are apparent here – one can discern that the various plates used for the coloring were not registered perfectly. This gives the print a hand-crafted, unique quality all too absent in contemporary printmaking.
Myers was an actor and artist, a specialist in the American turn of the century immigrant experience, particularly those immigrants in the Lower East Side of Manhattan; and those immigrants are the subject matter of this work.
Active in the art life of the times, he was a prime mover behind the Armory Show of 1913, successfully working with Walt Kuhn to get the highly esteemed Arthur B. Davies to help arrange the show. Myer’s paintings are an important part of America’s aesthetic and historical heritage; they can be found, for example, in the National Gallery alongside those of Everett Shinn, John Sloan, George Bellows.