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Northwest View from the Empire State Building

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Northwest View from the Empire State Building

1982
lithograph on vellum
50 1/2 in. x 34 3/4 in. (128.27 cm x 88.27 cm)
Corporate Rental Fund, 1983.55

Yvonne Jacquette
American
1934–2023

In her aerial landscapes, Yvonne Jacquette treats formal problems of pattern and color while simultaneously expressing her sense of wonder over the panoramic view. Attracted to drawing as a child, the Pittsburgh native entered the Rhode Island School of Design intending to become a professional illustrator. Besides taking regular courses in illustration, Jacquette studied Impressionism and the work of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) at the RISD museum. She also discovered Abstract Expressionism, which soon exerted a powerful influence on her developing sensibility. When her teachers discouraged her from pursuing abstraction further, Jacquette left Rhode Island for New York City, where she absorbed the work of Joan Mitchell (q.v.) and other painters.

During the early 1960s Jacquette turned from abstract painting and began to depict interiors and household objects. Eventually she began to make landscape views, in part because of her experience of the landscape during summer vacations spent in Maine. After studying the countryside from the window of an airplane, Jacquette was inspired to make the first of her aerial scenes. By the late 1970s she was making both day and night views. In contrast to the Photorealistic aesthetic that often governed such imagery, Jacquette's compositions are subjective and quirky. Anticipating the rise of Neoexpressionism and other figurative styles during the early 1980s, they gained the favor of critics and secured for Jacquette a firm place in the forefront of contemporary art. Since then, she has been widely praised for her views of Tokyo, New York, and other locales in both the United States and abroad.

Northwest View from the Empire State Building is one of the urban night views that brought Jacquette to prominence in the 1980s. From a vantage point high atop one of the world's tallest buildings, the viewer gazes over the rectilinear geometry and dazzling chiaroscuro of midtown Manhattan at night. Busy streets filled with the light of storefronts and automobile headlights suggest the excitement of New York at ground level, but higher up, the scene gives way to a quieter and more mysterious panorama of darkened rooftops and orderly patterns of illuminated windows. Displaying Jacquette's gift for blending the observed and the imaginary, Northwest View from the Empire State Building is believable as a record of the city yet is clearly composed according to the artist's individual sense of design and mood. While the geometry of the urban grid is set down with architectural precision, the play of light and the movement of traffic are rendered with painterly touches that recall Jacquette's interest in Impressionism. Idiosyncrasies of scale and perspective are also evident, further reinforcing the personal quality of Jacquette's vision.

Jacquette usually composes her aerial views in the studio following on site sessions in an airplane or in the windows of a tall building. Working from photographs and sketches, she gradually builds and adjusts her composition until she achieves the desired effect. Rendered in lithographic crayon and printed on vellum, Northwest View from the Empire State Building is largely monochromatic, yet its carefully modulated tones are nevertheless suggestive of deep color.

Northwest View from the Empire State Building was purchased by the Currier Museum of Art in 1983.

VSD

REFERENCES

David Cohen. "Canaletto of the Skies: David Cohen in Conversation with Yvonne Jacquette in New York and Searsmont, Maine." Artcritical.com (summer 2003). http://www.artcritical.com/studiovisit/DCJacquette.htm. Accessed January 24, 2005.

Yvonne Jacquette: Tokyo Nightviews. Ex. cat. Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, and Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME, 1986.


Exhibition
2001 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "From Wyeth to Welliver: American Realism of the 20th Century." June 30 - Sept. 3.

2008 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, "In the Artist's Words."


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