View of Manhattan (East River)

Wilhelm Thöny had lived in Paris with his wife Thea since 1931 when he first visited New York in 1933. The Belvedere dates this view loosely, between 1935 and 1938. In 1938 the couple crossed the Atlantic for what was meant to be a longer stay, and because of the war they settled there for good. The picture is oil on cardboard, painted fast, the paint dragged and scraped into a pale blue-white haze. Out of it rise Manhattan's towers as flat slabs of blue, black and bright red, a few pricked with rows of tiny windows. Low in the middle stands a dark tower with two pointed arches, the shape of the Brooklyn Bridge, which spans the East River of the title. A long white stroke runs diagonally across the sky, and Thöny's small signature sits in the top corner.