Afternoon Madison Square - Paul Cornoyer, c. 1910

Cornoyer painted Afternoon Madison Square during the first decade of the twentieth century, a period when he had relocated to New York after training in Paris and absorbing the lessons of the French Impressionists. He became one of the foremost chroniclers of the city in rain, fog, and the low amber light of autumn and winter, earning him the informal title of the American Whistler among contemporaries who recognised his debt to Tonalism. Madison Square Park, then framed by Stanford White's celebrated tower at the Garden's south end, was a subject of genuine cultural prestige: the neighbourhood was at the heart of Gilded Age New York, dense with clubs, restaurants and the well-dressed crowds Cornoyer favoured. His instinct was always to dissolve the city's hard lines into atmosphere, turning steel and masonry into something shimmeringly provisional, and this canvas stands as one of the clearest expressions of that instinct. Works from this period are held in American museum collections and have consistently attracted scholarly attention as documents of the city at a moment of immense physical and social transformation.