William Glackens

Hammerstein's Roof Garden
c. 1901

An impressionist painting depicting an indoor scene with elegantly dressed people watching a performance. In the foreground, a group of women in ornate hats and gowns are seated, facing away from the viewer towards a stage. A man in a black suit stands in the middle ground, overseeing the event. On the stage, a woman in a blue dress with a fan dances beside a man on a ladder, while another woman in white with a red parasol stands nearby. The setting suggests a rehearsal or a casual performance in a lavish venue with decorative elements and large mirrors reflecting the audience.

Not on view

Date
c. 1901

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on linen

Dimensions
Overall: 29 7/8 × 24 13/16in. (75.9 × 63 cm)

Accession number
53.46

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase

Rights and reproductions
© artist or artist’s estate

API
artworks/475

Hammerstein’s Roof Garden is an impressionistic rendering of an evening at a fashionable New York nightspot—a roof garden which provided open-air entertainment to urban audiences when stifling summer heat forced indoor theaters to close. Opened by impresario Oscar Hammerstein, the Palace Roof Garden presented vaudeville acts that varied from exotic Spanish dancers to bicycling jugglers and tightrope walkers. Only at the turn of the century did amusements of this sort become acceptable places for respectable women, who, in William Glackens's depiction, now sit side by side with men. The arena into which they gaze is lit by a filigreed tangle of electric lights, a recent invention that had made nighttime theater possible. In this painting, Glackens portrays not simply a night at the theater, but the changing mores of post-Victorian society and the impact of new technology on everyday life.