Skating+in+Central+Park

Date: 1934
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1964/1964.1.15_2a.jpg?itok=teOfZn2f width="406" height="287" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/skating-central-park-23599"]] || Title: **Skating in Central Park**

Artist: **Agnes Tait** Born: New York, New York 1894 Died: Santa Fe, New Mexico 1981

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 33 3/4 x 48 in. (85.8 x 121.8 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

Accession: 1964.1.15 || Agnes Tait had long wanted to make a large, festive painting of winter revelers in Central Park, but without a patron she could not take on this project. When the Public Works of Art Project gave her support in the winter of 1933–1934, the artist had her opportunity. As skaters and sledders flocked to the frozen lake and snowy slopes of Central Park, Tait joined them to sketch the winter fun. Then she retreated to her studio to make her painting.
 * Exhibition Label: **

Tait showed the park in late afternoon as the Manhattan sky began to blush and the street lamps to glow, but skating and sledding were still in full swing. Once she had the landscape painted, Tait added figures in groups to create a colorful pattern against the snow and ice. The dark branches of the bare trees make a more subtle design against the white snow and mist and the golden sky. Around the ends of tree branches and in patches along the snowbanks, Tait painted areas of gray into which she drew snow-covered twigs and grasses by scraping away the gray paint with the end of her paintbrush.

"I am working on a large decorative landscape of Central Park," wrote New York artist Agnes Tait to the local chairperson of the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project in 1934. "My scene is that of a large skating pond against the background of large buildings seen in the late afternoon light. Fortunately, the recent snows have afforded the effects I was seeking."

The work, //Skating in Central Park//, was chosen for display at the Department of Labor and became the artist's most popular painting. In portraying this particular slice of the American scene, Tait captures the gaiety and commotion of the moment and makes tangible the brisk, cold feeling of a winter day.


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