Category: 9/10/2009

I chose show Union Square in its past and present state. I couldn’t get the right angle, but I did the best that I could.

Taking the picture from the 6th floor of a department store obviously gave me a different perspective than that of Hassam’s painting. While the vanishing points of both pictures is in the middle, Hassam’s lies near the top-center while mine lies dead center. You can see rooftops in the painting, which shows that Hassam painted this at a higher elevation level than I was able to achieve.

Now at Union Square, there’s a dog park, playground, tourist center, and varying booths and shops. The Farmers’s Market (also known as the Greenmarket) is also there on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. While Hassam’s Union Square has plenty of grass and open area, today’s Union Square is mostly paved. The pond that resides in the painting is no longer there today. There are also more trees, obscuring the building that we see in the center of Hassam’s painting (which today is now Barnes & Noble). The Empire State Building can be seen in both pictures (though the photograph Empire is bigger, suggesting that Hassam painted from a further viewpoint). And while Hassam’s Union Square has a few people, I’m pretty sure hundreds or even thousands now frequent the area today.

The top picture shows Hassam’s painting of the A. T. Stewart Manision, built in 1869. The mansion once sat on the northwest corner of 34th St. and 5th Ave. and was home to the Manhattan Club from 1890 to 1899. The building was, however, torn down between 1902 and 1904. Today the corner has a Duane Reade pharmacy on the ground level of a skyscraper. It is also just across the street from the Empire State Building.

My photograph is not completely accurate in angle, but in both pictures the vanishing point is off the image to the far left. The lines the sidewalk forms are close and I included a bit of the closer sidewalk, as in the foreground of the painting. I had to fiddle with the angle at which I held my phone as well as the amount of zoom in order to get the photo close to the original. I believe I could have gotten it closer but I would have needed to be in the street where cars were parked. The area has changed drastically from when Hassam painted it, most of the historical buildings being torn down and replaced with large skyscrapers. The area appears just as bustling as in the painting, however, because it is now a tourist hot spot.

Although Hassam’s painting of the Brooklyn Bridge and my photo do differ slightly in perspective and angle, they do match in many ways. Both pictures contain the double arch is off to the right, the vanishing point is in about the same place, a group of people walking, and two lamp posts. Hassam may have been standing a little farther back when he painted this, and the time of day was different as well as the season. Also, when Hassam painted the bridge, there were no cables and no white line painted down the center, separating a bike lane and pedestrian lane. Otherwise, the two depictions match fairly well.

Lower Manhattan (Broad and Wall Streets), 1907

Lower Manhattan (Broad and Wall Streets), 2009

While slightly varied in perspective and dimensions, the picture I took matches Hassam’s painting because both are of the same street, featuring as a main landmark the New York Stock Exchange. The vanishing point in both images is somewhere behind the building at the next corner with the columns. In both images the viewer can see not quite three columns on that building in front of the vanishing point. Hassam’s point of view while painting would probably have been up higher, as the painting features mostly the tops of people’s heads, while mine includes their faces. The artist may also have been standing further back. Right now a great deal of construction and scaffolding occupies the place where he probably stood. Sunlight graces the intersection in his painting, as well, creating another difference. His view of the Stock exchange also lacked the classic elegance of September 2009’s Budweiser advertisement.

The two images are of Washington Arch in Washington Square Park. Both were taken along Fifth Avenue at one of the entrances to the park. The perspectives are slightly varied; Hassam was probably standing further away and had a more encompassing view. The times of the images are different as well. Hassam did this painting during spring, while I photographed it in September. It is seen in the differences of the trees; they are just in bloom in the spring, therefore they are more bare, while the photograph has a larger tree, as well as some grass behind the fence. However, there are similarities as well, such as the colors (greens, blues, greys), people (showing the bustling city streets) and the same architecture (the arch, the street, the landscape).

The two pictures match because they are both pictures of the same place (The Brooklyn Bridge). Although the picture I took is a slightly more zoomed in then the painting, it is taken from the same angle and  has the same vanishing point. In both pictures you can see two pairs of arches. The street lights are also in the same exact positions in the two pictures. In the Hassam painting the walkway appears wider then in the picture I took and you can’t see any background buildings.