In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C h a p t e r 7 November 1905 to January 1907 The Dongan Hills, Staten Island, NewYork On October 25, 1905, Julian wrote his mother telling her that he had rented half of an old farm house with an attic that would serve as his studio.The house was in the Dongan Hills area of Staten Island and the monthly rent was only $7.50, an amount equal to the family’s monthly meat bill. The lower rent delighted Julian, as it relieved some of the pressure on the family’s finances. Having abandoned the school at the Barrett Mansion, a lower rent was more important than physical location for Julian, so the little family moved in November 1905.1 [Figure 7.1] The Dongan Hills area lies southwest of Arrochar, inland and west of South Beach; it rises out of the coastal marshlands up against the ridge that divides Staten Island into southeast and northwest sections. The ridge is underlain by a formation of bluish to greenish grey serpentine and terminal moraines from ancient glaciers, and atop the ridge is Todt Hill (also called Toad Hill or Dongan Hill)—the highest point on Staten Island at just over 400 feet. In 1905 the uplands still had extensive remnants of forest and were speckled with ponds and lakes formed when the glaciers retreated after the last ice age. The actual Dongan Hills were the outwash plain from the uplands that had spilled into the Atlantic below. There were farms and marshlands running southeast to the coast and many trees and orchards remained in the lowlands, cattle and sheep grazed in the meadows, and the orchards bloomed in profusion in the spring. Drainage projects had cut channels throughout the marshes and meadows, creating numerous small waterways. The Richmond Road with the trolley lines ran below the ridge, and just below it ran the Staten Island Railroad, which had a station at the Dongan Hills. Spots along the serpentine ridge offered glimpses of Manhattan to the north; the Verrazano Narrows, Brooklyn, and Long Island to the east; New Jersey across the Kills (Dutch for streams) on the north, west, and south; and out to the Atlantic on the southeast . The Narrows, Upper and Lower New York Bays, Kills, and nearby Atlantic were busy waterways with ships coming and going most of the time.2 In 1905 the Dongan Hills area was even more rural than Arrochar Park. The farmhouse where Julian and his family lived was in a section of apple orchards and farms that lay along the Richmond Road; above the house lay remnants of the forested uplands of Todt Hill. In a letter to his parents in spring 1906 Julian included a pen and ink drawing of the area showing farmlands , apple trees in blossom, and scattered houses surrounded by picket fences with footpaths running between them (figure 7.2). Julian painted similar scenes many times over the next four years.3 Although Staten Island had public beaches, forts, bustling communities, railroads, bridges, schools, towns, villages, and ports, Julian largely ignored these venues for his work and chose instead to concentrate on the natural landscape and views of the ocean.The move to the Dongan Hills afforded him new subjects and vistas. He loved to go out alone with only his painting kit to capture the light, colors, and atmosphere of the landscape. His early love for water found a happy home in the area’s watery wonderland filled with marshes and meadows, small creeks, and ponds. He was rarely satisfied with painting a scene only once. It was not unusual for him to paint variations of a scene five or ten times, each one with subtle differences in light, color, and 7.1: Detail from Julius Bien’s 1890 map of Richmond County (Staten Island) showing : 1) The location of the Barrett Mansion in Arrochar. 2) Approximate location of the farm house Julian rented in the Dongan Hills. 3) The marshlands below the Dongan Hills where Julian often went to paint. Note the drainage lines that had been cut into the marshes to drain them. 4) Todt Hill (413 feet elevation). 5) New Dorp. 6) Richmond Road. From Joseph Rudolf Bien and Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule , Richmond Co., Staten Island, in Atlas of the Metropolitan District and adjacent country comprising the counties of New York, Kings, Richmond, Westchester and part of Queens in the state of New York, the county of Hudson and parts of the counties of...

Share