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C h a p t e r 8 1907 A QuietYear in the Dongan Hills As their fourth year on Staten Island began, Julian must have felt a sense of satisfaction and growing self-confidence. The family finances were no longer in such dire straits. In March, Julian donated a canvas to be sold at auction for the benefit of the New York Throat, Nose and Lung Hospital, an act of generosity he could not have afforded just two years earlier. The job with the State Fair of Texas provided him with at least some secure income during the dreaded summertime when paintings were hard to sell, but perhaps more importantly, it put him into contact with the leading artists of the New York area on an equal footing. The fellowship and association must have been important to Julian, who had by now established relationships with a number of New York galleries, and his work was becoming better known and appreciated.1 We have only identified three works by Julian that are reported to be dated 1907. They continue in the tonalist tradition of his earlier Dongan Hills works, and his signature still often exhibits short final strokes on the n’s. He produced both small- and largescale works and had achieved a high degree of proficiency by this time. Dongan Hills-Staten Island, New York (figure 8.1) is probably typical of the smaller works he was doing and shows his continued preoccupation with the lowlands and waterways in the area. Another small work dated 1907 is Early Morning, an oil-on-wood panel depicting a Staten Island dawn in the tonalist style. The third work said to be from 1907 is a large landscape, titled Overlooking lower bay—from Dongan Hills—Staten Island, and is almost certainly a late summer scene looking out over the Dongan Hills and the Verrazano Narrows beyond from a higher vantage point on the serpentine ridge (figure 8.2). Although it is reported in the auction catalog as dated 1907, upon inspection the date is unclear and may be 1906. These years should have been, and likely were, the most productive period of Julian’s life. He painted like a man possessed in order to support his family. These often hard times gave him the experiences that laid the foundation of his reputation as one of America’s finest painters. More than one artist has found that the wolf at the door is a challenging mentor—driving them to produce and keeping their attention focused. Without the distractions wealth and leisure might allow, they are often driven to be both better and more prolific. The enigma in Julian’s story is that there are so few known paintings from this period. We have touched on this problem earlier in regard to his arrangement with Chas. Tunison. We know he was signing another name, but what was that name and where are these works? There should be hundreds of them, painted from the summer of 1904 until the relationship with Tunison ended, although we do not know with certainty when Julian severed that relationship and began signing only his own 8.1: Julian Onderdonk, Dongan Hills-Staten Island, New York, July 21, 1907, oil on wood panel, 6.75 x 4.1 inches. Stated to be “signed, titled and dated July 21st 1907 on an old label on the reverse.” The label has subsequently been lost. Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers auction of Oct. 21, 2004, lot 30. Private collection. Image by James Graham Baker.| 61 | Baker pages final_FCID.pdf 79 12/26/13 1:22 PM Julian Onderdonk in New York| 62 | name to his works. Cecilia Steinfeldt believes that it was sometime in 1907, and in The Onderdonks: A Family of Texas Painters she writes: He also terminated the association with Mr.Tunison. In a letter to his mother he stated:“I am having a good deal of trouble with Tunison and I have practically made up my mind to tell him that I will have no more dealings with him at all.” Apparently the dealers had begun to realize that the paintings Mr. Tunison was peddling, signed with the name Turner, were not his, and refused to buy. Julian’s painting had improved, and he was using only his own signature. By the year 1908, he not only sold more to legitimate dealers, but also used his canvases for barter: “Traded with Lowenbein 4 small pictures for 3 small frames @ $5...

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