Church Street El
Capturing the soaring heights of New York City, this painting is a dramatic bird's-eye view of Broadway and Wall Street, showing a conglomeration of buildings at left and center, and the Church Street elevated train at right. Sheeler based his composition on an image from the short movie Manhatta (1920-21), which he made with the photographer Paul Strand. One of the first avant-garde American films, Manhatta celebrates the dynamic metropolis through a series of carefully composed shots of Lower Manhattan. As typical with Sheeler's work, the artist simplified forms and eliminated textures in Church Street El to concentrate on rhythmic interplay of shapes and color, and patterns of light and shadow.
Colors in this work
Details
- Date
- 1920
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- framed: height 0.6 m, width 0.675 m, depth 0.06 m; unframed: height 0.41 m, width 0.485 m
- Origin
- America
- Department
- American Painting and Sculpture
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
Art Genome Taxonomy
11 tags
Subject Matter
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Cityscapes and City Scenes Both · 100%
The catalog identifies the subject as a bird’s-eye view of Broadway and Wall Street in New York City, and the image visibly depicts a dense urban arrangement of buildings, streets, and elevated structures.
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Modes of Transportation Both · 100%
The catalog identifies the Church Street elevated train, while the image clearly shows the long parallel elevated railway tracks at the right.
Visual Qualities
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Geometric Visual · 99%
Buildings, shadows, streets, and railway elements are simplified into strongly bounded polygons, bars, and planes.
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Angular Visual · 99%
The composition is dominated by pronounced diagonal and vertical edges, especially those of the elevated tracks and surrounding architecture.
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Flatness Visual · 95%
Large areas of relatively even color and simplified architectural silhouettes reduce the sense of modeled, naturalistic space.
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Emphasis on Linear Perspective Visual · 90%
The railway tracks and building edges create strong directional lines that recede through the compressed aerial view.
Medium and Techniques
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Painting Metadata · 100%
The Cleveland Museum of Art classifies the work as a painting.
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Oil Painting Metadata · 100%
The museum specifies the medium as oil on canvas.
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Photographic Source Metadata · 99%
The museum states that Sheeler based the composition on an image from Manhatta, the film he made with Paul Strand.
Time Periods
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1918 - 1939 (Interwar) Art Metadata · 100%
The work is dated 1920, within the catalog category covering art made from 1918 through 1939.
Geographic Regions
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American Art Metadata · 100%
The artist is identified as American and the place of origin is listed as America.
Source & rights
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965). Church Street El. Cleveland Museum of Art.
High-resolution sources
- Original TIFF ↗ 4,446 × 3,715 · Cleveland Museum Of Art · Available