December 11, 2013The artist talks with the designer Oscar de la Renta and gallery owner William Acquavella earlier this fall at the opening of her show at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo by Julie Saad. Top: Detail of Roller Blades. Photo by Antoine Bootz. All images © Janet Ruttenberg and courtesy of Pointed Leaf Press
Collectors, gallerists and museum curators pride themselves on discovering new talent — perhaps a 16-year-old graffiti artist or someone constructing industrial-strength sculptures in a downtown warehouse in you-name-the-city. But who would have imagined that the first exhibition of a gifted heretofore unknown would be the work of a petite and elegant 82-year-old patrician? Her name: Janet K. Ruttenberg. The venue: The Museum of the City of New York. The theme: Central Park.
Born in Dubuque, Iowa, Ruttenberg has been quietly at her craft for decades, showing the results to few people (mostly family) and never selling or putting any of her pictures on public display — until now. For the past 15 years, her main concentration has been on, and in, Central Park. The New York Times has even dubbed her “the grand dame of park portraiture in New York City.”
Almost every day, Ruttenberg leaves her spacious, art-filled duplex overlooking the East River, goes across town to her studio on the Upper West Side, picks up her shopping cart of art supplies and then pushes it into the park. Once she finds her spot, she lays out one of her enormous canvasses on the grass and begins painting landscapes, people, whatever captures her eye. Like Renoir and Monet and other plein-air artists before her, she has taken a beloved greensward and all that goes on within its perimeters and captured it for the ages. And now, through January 4, 2014, nearly 20 of her large-scale oils and watercolors are on stunning pubic view in “Picturing Central Park.”
A detail view of The Judgement of Paris (with Morning Glories), which is an oil on canvas with applied photographic and painted fragments. Photo by Antoine Bootz
None of this would have happened without the imploring of her daughter-in-law, TV journalist Perri Peltz, and her family friend George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, a city-run organization aimed at promoting tourism. Ruttenberg was reluctant at first: She couldn’t understand why anyone would be interested. But they were.
Accompanying the exhibition is a limited-release of a related book, Gatherings, which reproduces what’s on display, but also tells of Ruttenberg’s personal history, her earlier work and her fascinating technique. Published by Pointed Leaf Press, it’s available at the museum’s shop for $95 (if, that is, you can still get a copy).
The museum sits at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street, at the top of what’s known as Museum Mile — and just across the street from Central Park itself. Which means anyone attending the show can experience a double pleasure: seeing Ruttenberg’s vision of the park and then crossing Fifth Avenue to enjoy the real thing.
