Landscape
WILLIAM S. SCHWARTZ (1896–1977)
The Old Monastery Wall, 1927
Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 in.
Signed, dated, and inscribed (at lower left): WILLIAM S. SCHWARTZ; (on the back): "THE OLD MONASTERY WALL" / BY / WILLIAM S. SCHWARTZ / CHICAGO / 1927; (on the stretcher): OLD MONASTERY WALL
RECORDED: Olga Schatz, "The Art of William Schwartz and Raymond Katz," in Chicago Jewish Chronicle, May 9, 1941, p. 12
EXHIBITED: Bethany College of Fine Arts, Lindsborg, Kansas, 1928, Annual Art Festival // University of Missouri, Columbia, 1928 // Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan; Illinois State Museum, Springfield; and State of Illinois Art Gallery, Chicago, 1984–86, The Paintings, Drawings, and Lithographs of William S. Schwartz (1896–1977), pp. 23 no.16, 27 illus. in color // Madron Gallery, Chicago, September 20–November 24, 2021, William S. Schwartz: Color and Coloratura
EX COLL.: the artist; to estate of the artist, 1977
As did many immigrants before and since, William Schwartz took the occasion of his transplant from one nationality to another to reinvent himself. Biographers have fretted over the few and indistinct details of his early life and looked to known facts to surmise further circumstances. Schwartz’s paintings of the 1920s, apparently set in Europe or with clearly Jewish themes—The Wandering Jew exhibited in 1922, and Talmudists exhibited in 1927 in Pittsburgh, 1928 in Chicago, and 1931 in Philadelphia—are taken as proof that despite his verbal reticence, he had not made a clean break from his past. The Old Monastery Wall has generally been included in this group. Understood as a memory summoned from his early life, this is plausible. But early picture titles as well as Schwartz’s own testimony about the enduring effect of music on his painting oeuvre offer an additional tantalizing possibility. Schwartz spent significant time in the 1920s singing principal operatic tenor roles: Pallaccio, from Leoncavallo’s Palacci; Radamès, from Verdi’s Aida; and Jenik, from Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, among others.
The Old Monastery Wall depicts a group of hooded monks placed against a Cezanne-like background. The source of light in the painting defies identification as to time or day or weather conditions. The Old Monastery Wall shares these compositional devices with other Schwartz paintings of the 1920s. These paintings seem almost to depict story-telling tableaus. They have generally been interpreted as either a memory of “the old country” or symbolic paintings whose symbolism remains unknown. Given the circumstances of Schwartz’s life when they were painted, they may just as likely be understood as evocations inspired by stage sets, with their dramatic lighting and stylized two-dimensional backdrops. The viewer of the painting is in the same position as the audience of the operatic performance.
