Peninsula Hotel III

Peninsula Hotel III

  • 43 x 30 undefined
  • US dollars

$5,000

US dollars

"Peninsula Hotel III" focuses on a pair of sculpted figures flanking the bull's-eye window above the main entrance on West 55th Street in New York City. It is the third in a series painted from this facade, following earlier paintings of the individual figures, and the first to include the circular window, an opening that seems to lead somewhere else. The building opened in 1905 as the Hotel Gotham, designed by Hiss & Weekes, former employees of McKim, Mead & White and faced in limestone to harmonize with McKim's University Club directly to the south. At twenty-three stories, it was among the earliest of the "skyscraper hotels" and one of the first in the city built on a steel frame. The original venture lasted only three years. The Gotham was foreclosed in 1908, having failed to obtain a liquor license. Agriculture and the hunt, provision and plenty, set above the door. The figures are Ceres and Diana. Ceres tips her head back, a cornucopia at her shoulder; Diana wears a crescent moon in her hair and keeps one hand on her bow. Both sit on the outward scrolls of a broken pediment. The painting holds everything in warm cream and ochre except the window, which runs from turquoise to a pale glow at its center. The brightest passage in the picture is the opening itself. * Framing: Framed; frame not shown * Room view: For scale and presentation only

January, 2013
Watercolor painting
Figure, Effigy, Landmark, NYC
  • US dollars

$5,000

US dollars

Other work