New York from a Seaplane

“New York from a Seaplane” depicts a sun-dappled aerial view of lower Manhattan with such recognizable landmarks such as the Woolworth Building and the Brooklyn Bridge. The architecturally-dense foreground gives way to the winding East River, whose far bank meets the indistinct, blue-tinted landmass of Brooklyn and Queens that recedes into the distant skyline. The wing tip of a sharply-turning Boeing C plane is visible in the upper left corner. Warner was flown in Navy planes over New York City and along the eastern seaboard every day for approximately one month in 1919 shortly before decommissioning from military service in and after World War I. He created several dozen small oil sketches that he then used as fodder for enlarged finished paintings and pastels. “New York from a Seaplane” is the only extant work from Warner’s aerial views of Manhattan, as he destroyed many of them later in his career and others were lost in a studio fire. This pastel shows an indebtedness to his affiliation with the Old Lyme art colony where beginning in 1909 he worked in an impressionist aesthetic alongside Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, and others. Warner’s simulation of sparkling light on architectural forms, with short strokes, shown from a daring angle yields a novel marriage of American Impressionist techniques with modern compositional boldness.