Street Scene

Artist / Maker Christine "Cris" R. Glasell (Austrian - American, 1898 - 1971)

Date1939

MediumOil on canvas.

Dimensions27 x 24 in. (68.6 x 61 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LinePurchased by University Museums from federal Public Works of Art Programs by Iowa State College. Conserved in 2009 by Barry Bauman, Chicago, Illinois. In the Permanent Collection, Brunnier Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object numberUM2008.18

Status

Not on view

Collections

CultureAmerican

Label TextGlasell’s art is distinctive during the 1930s because she focused on urban life in Iowa, taking the streets of cities such as Dubuque as her subjects. Although they seldom contained many figures, her paintings still managed to give a sense of the life of the towns and their people. In Street Scene, Glasell peers into downtown Dubuque, showing the first City Hall which was a “pioneer” building of 1858, one of the earliest monumental civic buildings in the state. Often, the buildings in her paintings have a sort of ramshackle appearance, and she was adept at suggesting the poverty and economic stress of the times. Her depictions of the streets of Iowa towns are full of older buildings and storefronts that do not suggest prosperity. She is one of the few Iowa artists for whom the Depression haunted her pictures; her own life was difficult then, and her paintings reflect the feelings of many—not just artists—during those difficult times. Christine Rosner Glasell emigrated from Vienna with her parents in 1904, trained at the Art Institute of Chicago, and married another immigrant artist, Donald Glasell from Denmark. Both Glasells were active in Iowa art circles, attending Grant Wood’s Stone City Art Colony and helping to establish the Sioux City Art Center. -Lea Rosson DeLong from Artists in Iowa, University Museums, 2019

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