Peter Blume, Study for South of Scranton (Crow’s Nest), 1930
Peter Blume (American 1906–1992)
Study for South of Scranton (Crow’s Nest), 1930
Graphite on paper, 13 7/8 × 9 in (35.24 × 22.86 cm)
Carnegie Museum of Art, Patrons Art Fund, 84.28.1
This drawing touched on an interesting bit of the Carnegie Museum’s history: the scandal and controversy created by Peter Blume in 1930 when he exhibited his painting South of Scranton in the Carnegie International Exhibition. At the time, Surrealist painting was utterly new and shocking to a Pittsburgh audience: in balloting for the exhibition’s Popular Prize, South of Scranton won only twenty-two votes, whereas the winner, Frederick J. Waugh’s very conventional seascape of Tropic Seas, received 1,920.
Because of the controversy, the museum did not buy the painting, which has become a classic, and it is now in the Metropolitan Museum. But amusingly, only a few years later, Blume’s painting The Rock (which features the building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater), did win the popular prize—an interesting instance of how quickly taste can change. Sadly, the museum failed to secure The Rock as well. Edgar Kaufmann Jr. donated it to the Art Institute of Chicago.
On the right side of South of Scranton is a view of the German cruiser Emden, which Blume had seen in Charleston harbor, with German sailors in gym shorts performing calisthenic exercises on the deck. This is a study of the crow’s nest of the Emden. While the museum missed out on the opportunity to buy the painting itself, it seemed fitting to at least partly make up for the mistake by acquiring this drawing.
Bibliography
Henry Adams, American Drawings and Watercolors, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, exhibition catalog, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, May l985, pp. 160-163.