Floreine Stettheimer: An Idiosyncratic Style

Florine Stettheimer - The Cathedrals of Art - 1942 - Oil on canvas - 60 1/4 x 50 1/4 in. (153 x 127.6 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (click photo for larger image)American painter, designer, and poet Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944) developed a highly personal and idiosyncratic style that was characterized by vivid color, a purposeful naiveté, and whimsical humor—often in the service of wry social comment.

Stettheimer received training at New York’s Art Students League, where she studied from 1892 to 1895. In 1906 she moved to Europe with her mother and two sisters. While living abroad, she continued her studies in painting and was exposed to the work of the Symbolists and the Postimpressionists. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the family returned to New York City, where the Stettheimer women began hosting salons for Modernists. 

Stettheimer did receive some recognition during her lifetime. In 1932 her work was included in the First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painters at the Whitney Museum. Her most ambitious work was a series of four canvases (one of which is featured here) in which she glorified and critiqued the cathedrals of the modern city: the financial district, the theatre, department stores, and the art museum. In this series, Stettheimer created extraordinary composite visions of New York’s economic, social, and cultural institutions. 

The Cathedrals of Art is a fantastical portrait of the New York art world. Microcosms of three of the city’s major museums and their collections are watched over by their directors: the Museum of Modern Art (upper left), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (center), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (upper right). A gathering of art critics, dealers, and photographers of the day, including Stettheimer herself (lower right), appears around the Metropolitan’s grand staircase. She was still working on The Cathedrals of Art when she died.