American painter Theresa Bernstein is renowned for her vivid and energetic works. Born in Krakow, Poland, on March 1, 1890, she emigrated to the United States as a young kid with her family. Bernstein studied painting first at the Art Students League of New York, then at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. Her art is frequently linked to the American realist Ashcan School, a group of painters who concentrated on portraying daily life in metropolitan settings. Typically, Bernstein painted images of New York City, encapsulating its busy streets, vibrant communities, and multicultural population. She had a good eye for expressing the liveliness and vigour of city living.
Throughout her career, Bernstein had numerous exhibitions and won praise from critics. Her ability to depict the human experience via art and her deft use of colour were her most significant assets. Bernstein was a gifted painter as well as an illustrator and printmaker. The continuing attraction of Bernstein’s art and its insight into American culture in the early 20th century continue to be praised. On February 13, 2002, she passed suddenly. She left behind a vast body of work that still inspires and impacts audiences today.
American artists who embraced modernist trends like Expressionism, Cubism, and Impressionism included Bernstein in their age. Her contribution to the American art scene was the introduction of these avant-garde styles. Bernstein’s accomplishments as a woman artist were remarkable in an era when men dominated the art world. She dismantled obstacles and cleared the path for a new wave of female artists.
Scenes of urban life in New York City were frequently featured in Bernstein’s artwork. She produced invaluable historical and cultural documentation by capturing the city’s vibrancy, diversity, and complexity in the early 20th century through her paintings. The social and political problems of Bernstein’s day, such as women’s rights, labour battles, and immigrant experiences, were widely covered in her writing. She used her paintings to reflect on society and bring attention to important issues of her time.
Bernstein had a multi-decade career that was both lengthy and productive. Over time, her works changed to reflect shifts in cultural standards and creative movements. Her works now add to the rich fabric of American art history, valued for their aesthetic and historical significance.
Art and Identity of Theresa Bernstein
‘Although not a formal member of the Ashcan School, Bernstein shared with it a passion for “modern” subject matter, to which she added a radically expressive manner. She enthusiastically embraced urbanism and popular culture, painting subjects such as cinema, trolleys, elevated trains, and Coney Island. She exhibited at the MacDowell Club and had a major show at the Milch Gallery in 1919. Her harbour views and beach scenes painted in blazing Fauve-like colour attracted equal interest among the young modernists of Gloucester, writes Patricia M. Burnham.
Bernstein felt the thrill of being the first woman to transcend the gender threshold at the start of the new century, but she was also subjected to the humiliation of prejudice. Reviewers frequently characterised her work as having a “masculine” style by insinuating criticism or reluctantly complimenting. Regardless of her gendered technique, she identified as a woman and included things that most people would overlook in her artwork, like women in the workforce, female artists, and suffragist demonstrations.
‘With her lively brushstrokes and urban subjects, Bernstein has often been linked to the Eight, an all-male group from Philadelphia that later expanded into the well-known Ashcan School. A critic from Art News supposedly wrote, “Theresa Bernstein might as well have been labelled a Henrietta and elected as the ninth member of The Eight.” Henrietta was a reference to Robert Henri, the founder and leader of the group. Theresa Bernstein’s work was not a derivative of Ashcan art; instead, it offered something new and original to the particular movement. Art historian Elsie Heung goes so far as to argue that Bernstein had a unique vision distinct from those of her contemporaries, especially the Ashcan School. This thesis proceeds from the assumption that downplaying Bernstein’s connections to the Ashcan School lessens the significance of her actions and artworks because her involvement with the Ashcan School complicates and challenges the traditional readings of masculinity and femininity in art production, writes Victoria Blanche Naden, in her thesis, ‘The Empathetic Gaze: Theresa Bernstein’s Early Images Of Women In New York City’.
The thematics of sight appear to set Theresa Bernstein’s work apart from that of the Ashcan School, “the changes in urban population, the new social mores, and the commercial practices that commodified sight created new arenas and occasions for looking” by the early twentieth century. The Ashcan painters portrayed “New Yorkers looking, peeping, watching, and scrutinising, of seeing and being seen, as well as engaging in spectacle and display” in response to this quickly evolving urban vision.
Regarding the themes of sight, the most engaged participants focused on how metropolitan women participated in new kinds of spectacle by presenting themselves as commodities. Even though Bernstein painted many urban ladies, her style differed from that of Ashcan School artists. Rather than show people observing each other, Bernstein made references to the emerging culture of gazing, chiefly through the inclusion of female characters who appear to be assessing the painting’s possible observer. The rules of spectatorship changed at the turn of the century, moving from a male-only gaze to a female-accompanied gaze.
According to Victoria Blanche Naden, Bernstein is inclusive, embracing a variety of types. While the woman in the fur coat, just below the orator, is likely from the upper class, the mother and child to her left belong to a lower class, most likely the working class. The mother is not wearing a modern hat, which most women—even those with minimal means—sported at the time, and her clothes are frumpy, ill-fitting, and straightforward. Bernstein also includes middle-class women in her work. For example, the woman carrying the flowers signals a middle-class status with her fashion, but the clothes do not appear overly expensive. The woman with flowers dons a small hat with a bit of adornment atop, likely feathers, and a matching, well-fitted coat and full-length skirt. Throughout the image, Bernstein mixes and juxtaposes figures from all different classes, careful not to stereotype the movement and the people attending the meeting. Bernstein’s Suffrage Meeting has no grotesque or idealized stereotypes; it is a realistic scene. Even a viewer at the time read the work as depicting a “crowd made up of genuine women and men.”
Unlike many other artists, Bernstein uses her scenes to show the everyday ladies of the 1910s, including herself, rather than an established type. The few self-portraits Bernstein produced alluded to her normalcy. For example, Bernstein’s Self-Portrait presents a humble image of the artist because she did not overly enhance or accentuate her features to attract the viewer’s attention. Her lack of idealisation is demonstrated by a comparison with a 1919 photo of Bernstein, which shows remarkable similarities.
‘For Bernstein, it was about creating a new and more positive image for suffragettes and generating works that inspired dialogue and awareness. In speaking of her contributions to the suffrage movement, Bernstein claimed that she convinced a few people to vote for women, “but my main weight in this direction was through my work, which was exhibited and discussed.” Ultimately, the painting was Bernstein’s voice and is her most-lasting contribution to suffrage activism’, writes Victoria Blanche Naden.
