Stefan Hirsch (1899-1964)

David Rockefeller wrote of the history of the present work, "Before Rockefeller Center was built and while there were still a large number of brownstones on the blocks now occupied by the center, Mother commissioned [Stefan] Hirsch to do a painting from the fifth-floor window of our home on West 54th Street. The room in which he worked was my bedroom." (as quoted in J. Barnitz, et al., The David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection: Art of the Western Hemisphere, vol. II, New York, 1988, p. 117) Indeed, the present work depicts the skyscrapers of New York City as seen from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s nine-story home at 10 West 54th Street, the current site of The Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden, and a view which Abby Aldrich Rockefeller lamented losing during the construction boom of the 1930s. Here Hirsch captures for his patron the icons of the cityscape, including the Chrysler Building and Saint Patrick's Cathedral at left and the Empire State Building at right. With his modernist execution of these towers under a swirling, stormy sky, Hirsch goes beyond mere documentation to create a dramatic evocation of the city during this time of rapid industrial and architectural development.