The Elevated

This early work by Edith Mitchill (later Prellwitz) is a remarkable example of her painterly talent and vision while studying at New York’s Art Students League, where she was elected Women’s Vice President in 1888. A student of Kenyon Cox, William Merritt Chase, and George de Forest Brush, Mitchill would go on to work as primarily a portraitist and figure painter. Painted with an on-the-spot immediacy, this distinctive industrial scene was likely inspired by the French Impressionists, especially Claude Monet and his train series. The canvas’s calligraphic brushwork and pastel-like surface reveal Mitchill’s flair for texture and color. The subject is thought to be a Forney locomotive on the Third Avenue El, an elevated train line established in 1878 that operated in Manhattan until 1955.