Artist/Maker Julia Titsworth (American, 1878 – 1941)

From My Window

ca. 1930

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 15 3/4 × 19 in. (40 × 48.3 cm)
Framed: 18 1/2 × 21 1/2 in. (47 × 54.6 cm)

Promised gift of Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, Scenes of New York City

IL2021.51.28

Julia Titsworth graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1902, studied in Paris and, before settling in California, lived and worked in New York—first in Manhattan and later in Bronxville. Her years in New York, from approximately 1915 to 1930, coincided with the great age of skyscraper construction. Fed by technological advancements, a rapidly expanding workforce, increasing demand for office space, and competition among corporations for the most eye-catching headquarters, a series of record-breaking towers rose into the Empire City skyline. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower (1909), the Woolworth Building (1913), the New York Telephone Building (1927), the Chrysler Building (1930), and the Empire State Building (1931) drew attention not only as icons of American progress and prosperity but as platforms for newly opened perspectives on the City. In the days before airplane travel became commonplace, skyscrapers afforded novel views from high within “the blue vault of the firmament.” From My Window explores one such newly opened view. A handwritten inscription matching the artist’s signature appears on the back of the canvas notes that the painting shows the view from the forty-fourth floor of the Chrysler Building, near Titsworth’s first New York address. The iconic Art Deco skyscraper, completed in 1930, served briefly—until it was surpassed by the Empire State Building the following year—as the world’s tallest building. Titsworth’s view includes at the far left a sliver of the gray brick used in the geometric patterning of the Chrysler’s exterior. The view northeast toward Queens highlights the contrast between Manhattan’s high-rises and the lower profile of its neighboring borough. The panoramic sweep shows the East River spanned by the Queensborough Bridge and bisected by Roosevelt Island, then known for its concentration of hospitals as Welfare Island. The blocky forms of the buildings abstract Midtown into a play of geometric shapes varied by sandy hues. Patches of impasto animate the picture, as do the slightly splayed diagonals of the opened sash window and the window ledge below. On the back of the canvas is a label noting the original selling price of $150.00, the title of the work, and the artist’s affiliation with the “AWA Club House.” Located at 353 West Fifty-seventh Street, the American Women’s Association Clubhouse was established in 1927 as the permanent home for an association founded to support the advancement of women in the professional and cultural spheres. Titsworth was additionally associated with the American Federation of the Arts and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors (now the National Association of Women Artists). COMMUNITY VOICE My view from Roosevelt Island toward Manhattan is the reverse of the one shown here. I moved to the island in 1976 and found an apartment with industrially designed floor-to-ceiling windows looking toward the Chrysler Building. I was raised in Utah and Idaho, and the Chrysler Building was the epicenter of my vision of New York City—I knew it from the Art Deco-era movies of the 1930s. I still sit in my window nightly and look at it. Sande Elinson Roosevelt Island resident

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