Original 1932 John Wenger Watercolor "Coney Island in Winter"

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An original 1932 watercolor painting by John Wenger (American, born Russia, 1887–1976), signed lower right. The painting looks out along … Read more An original 1932 watercolor painting by John Wenger (American, born Russia, 1887–1976), signed lower right. The painting looks out along the weathered pier at Coney Island toward a paddle-wheel steamer, set beneath an ominous overcast sky with a pale moon breaking out of the clouds above the dark choppy water. Smoke exits nearly horizontally from the steamer, telling you just how windy that day was.

I am nearly certain this painting is titled "Coney Island in Winter." The subject matter is the Coney Island pier, and it bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1931 painting called "Coney Island" hanging in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. "Coney Island in Winter" was first exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York City in 1934 and was cited for its how it “fills the eye with the glow of his bold harmonies” (New York Herald Tribune, 1934).

The painting was newly framed in a textural grey (that complements the stormy watercolor) in 2026 by the Indian King Framery in Keene NH.

John Wenger was born in 1887 in the small town of Elizabethgrad, near Odessa, in modern-day Ukraine. His father Samuel was a painter. As a young man, John studied at the Imperial Art School of Odessa and was apprenticed to a "dramatic stock company" which played Tolstoy, Ibsen, Chekhov, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and works of Shakespeare (Migot, 1922; Saturday Evening Post, 1929). This early training planted the seeds of his later artistic successes as one of the United States's great set designers in operatic and theatrical productions.

Wenger moved to the United States around 1908, settling in Newark, where he studied art at the National Academy of Design. He worked as a painter and occasionally exhibited works at the Fulson Galleries in New York. He got his real start as a set designer in 1916 when he became a pioneer of the use of theatrical gauze, a cotton fabric that appears opaque when lit from the front but is see-through when lit from behind.

He went on to have a long career as a painter and set designer for opera houses in Boston and New York, especially the Metropolitan Opera House, and on Broadway, including in the Capitol, Rivoli, and Roxy Theatres and Radio City Music Hall. He eventually became artistic director at the Rivoli and Rialto theatres. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described him as an "indefatigable painter who likes to turn out large and ambitiously planned watercolor compositions when he is not otherwise engaged in the designing of theatrical sets" (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1936). His most famous productions include "Petrushka" and "Hansel and Gretel" at the Met, "Romeo and Juliet" at Radio City, and George Gershwin musicals like "Oh, Kay!" and "Funny Face" (New York Herald Tribune, 1961).

As a painter, he belonged to the "impressionist school with a trend to fluid form" and made "pigments gleam and sparkle like jewels" in the words of the Brooklyn Eagle. In the 1960s, the small Middle Eastern state of Sharjah created a collection of stamps honoring great American artists, featuring John Singer Sargent, Grant Wood, John Wenger, Winslow Homer, James M. Whistler, Gilbert Stuart, and Frederic Remington. Wenger's stamp was of Beethoven.

Notable works in Museum collections include:

• Coney Island, 1931, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn NY
• Come to the Moon, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Instit., Washington DC
• Mysterioso, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• Jazz, 1924, Museum of the City of New York
• Bridge of Distance, 1925, Museum of the City of New York
• Good Boy, 1926, Museum of the City of New York
• Riverside Church, Los Angeles City College
• Street of Make Believe, St Vincent College, Latrobe, PA

Over his long career as a painter he exhibited works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the National Academy, the Pennsylvania Academy, the Chicago Art Institute, the Milwaukee Art Institute, the Worcester Art Museum, the 1939 World's Fair, the Architectural League, the Memorial Gallery (Rochester, NY), Corcoran Galleries (Washington DC), and the Stendahl Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), among many other places.

References

Archives of American Art. John Wenger Papers, 1922–1977. Smithsonian Institution. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/john-wenger-papers-10109

Brooklyn Museum of Art, Coney Island, 1931, John Wenger
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/2837

Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1936. "One-Man Shows Inaugurate the Season." October 4, 1936.

John Wenger: Artist File — Study Photographs and Reproductions of Works of Art with Accompanying Documentation
https://edan.si.edu/slideshow/viewer/?eadrefid=AAA.wengjohn_ref9 https://edan.si.edu/slideshow/viewer/?eadrefid=AAA.wengjohn_ref6

Migot, Edwin. 1922. "John Wenger." Art Review, October 1922.

New York Herald Tribune. 1934. "Gordon Grant and John Wenger." October 14, 1934

New York Herald Tribune. 1961. "Theater of the Twenties." April 28, 1961.

New York Times. 1976. "John Wenger, 89, A Scenic Artist." August 26, 1976.

Saturday Evening Post. 1929. "Scenery Wizard to Show Paintings." May 6, 1929. See less