Alexander Brook's Art Class, Art Students League

ANNA E. MELTZER

American, 1896 – 1975

Alexander Brook’s Art Class, Art Students League, 1936

Oil on canvas

© Artist’s estate

Gift of Gene A. (W&M 1952) and Mary A. Burns

1998.032

In 1896, Anna Elkan Meltzer was born to Russian immigrant parents on the lower east side of New York City. Her father, Rudolph Elkan worked in real estate and her mother Sarah encouraged Meltzer to engage in academics and music. However, it was her high school teacher who inspired Meltzer to pursue art, and she then promptly enrolled in the Cooper Union Art School. During her career, she created many works of art, two of which have ended up here at the Muscarelle. The first is a sort of landscape work seen here, which illustrates her strong connections with New York City and impressionist techniques. The second is featured in this exhibit and is the subject of this talk. Alexander Brook’s Art Class, Art Students League, 1936 by Meltzer illustrates her training and experience of being an artist and can help understand the idea of the art of well-being.

Meltzer became a skilled painter who was known for her impressionistic oils with diffused lights, angular motifs, and alluring colors. She was predominantly influenced by the art of the early decades of the twentieth century, which was characterized by vibrant pictorial art and the eras of post-Impressionism and of experimentation, including early Expressionism and Abstraction.

Meltzer graduated from The Cooper Union and studied at the Art Students League. The Art Students League is pictured here as a photograph from a few years ago as well as in a historical sketch which is interesting as the painting features the interior of this building. Meltzer additionally went on to teach art at the College of the City of New York from 1951 to 1962 and was a founder of Audubon Artists, a fellow of the Royal Art Society of London, and a member of the American Artists Professional League. Anna Meltzer also founded her own school of painting at her home studio, which she directed until her passing in 1976. In an interview about her school, she addressed her thoughts on the teaching of art at colleges and similar educational schools. Meltzer states that she “objects to any school of thought, whether academism, modernism or any other ism. [She thought] that college art tends to talk “down” and the specialized art school to “talk up” to students. The college art major, consequently apologizes for not having studied at an art school, and the high school student thinks he knows more than the seasoned artist.” To remedy this, she recommended that “all public school and college level art be taught by professional artists.”

This idea of professional teaching can be seen in Meltzer’s work, Alexander Brook’s Art Class, which shows her classmates in the Art Students League studying with Alexander Brook, a well-known realist painter.

Also born to Russian immigrants, Brook was a proponent of American Realism during the early twentieth century. He tended to depict melancholy subjects with unflattering realism. His palettes typically included dark grays and browns, making no attempt to enhance or beautify appearances. This fact is interesting when examining Meltzer’s painting.

In stark contrast to Brook, Meltzer used soft but vibrant colors. Instead of greys and browns, she throws in mustard yellows, sage greens, soft lilacs, and dusty pinks. These colors create an atmosphere of calm creativity. Meltzer concentrates on the tight grouping of the women which along with the repeated arrangement of the easels and the position of the individual women, gives a sense of community as the students focus on their painting.

This painting is featured in the art-making subtheme of this exhibit, though it has ties to almost all of the themes threaded throughout. The left side of the painting shows a woman sat apart from the rest. This individual concentrates on her own work, which clearly looks different and more developed than the rest. On the far-right side, there is a shorter woman next to a taller one. Now, this could just be a realistic height difference, or this could be a child with her mother or family member, connecting to the kin subtheme.

The primary theme of this painting however it’s the depiction of artists making their works. It is illustrative of how the act of creating can be a cathartic process which has power in the realm of well-being. Meltzer even signs her work “Anna E. Meltzer. 1936.” which indicates that she wants it to be known that it was she who created this work.

The Art Making subtheme refers to the connection between the ideas of well-being and art. Whether through reflection and inspiration or through the creative act, art relates powerfully to well-being. The subtheme seeks to display works that will prompt both a passive activity (in which viewers may meditatively reflect on art-making) as well as the active experience of inspiration (in the intellectual process of creation). I personally think that this work by Anna Meltzer perfectly illustrates this idea in every aspect of the work.

Katherine Welch '21