A Home for Artists

Speaking of artists’ studios, I see that a New York City real estate firm is now asking $15.5 million, reduced from $20 million just a year ago, for Paul Trebilcock’s old penthouse studio apartment at 44 West 77^th Street in my fashionable Upper West Side neighborhood.  Trebilcock, a prolific portrait painter for many years, lived there with his wife, Amaylia, also a painter, and their two children from 1930 until his death in 1981 at the age of 79.  I suppose the kids grew up and left home before then.  I don’t know.

You might very well ask, “Trebilcock, who’s he?”  Apart from Sargent, Zorn, the great Boldini and a few others, the fame of a skilled portrait painter much admired during his lifetime seldom extends beyond the grave.  Trebilcock was born in Chicago, graduated from the University of Illinois, and studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago with the excellent portrait painter Leopold Seyffert, who himself  learned a lot about painting from his friend, the outstanding Basque painter Zuloaga.

Paul Trebilcock, 1926, www.louisgrell.com

Paul Trebilcock, "Matianita," The Art Institute of Chicago 

1932 Exhibit

Paul Trebilcock, “Arnold R. Rich,” 1958, chief pathologist

 at Johns Hopkins Hospital

Paul Trebilcock, FDR, Columbia U, www.argentaimages.com

Trebilcock’s work is said to be in many museums, and he painted portraits of a lot of famous people.  I’m sure these portraits still exist, but just not as digitalized images on the World Wide Web.  His most famous sitter was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, painted in the White House on a commission from Columbia University, where Roosevelt attended law school for two years before leaving in 1907 to practice law after already having passed the bar exam.  But for the life of me, all I could find on the Internet was an old B&W photo on the website of the fee-based Argenta Images.  And I’m not about to ride the subway up to Columbia to see if I can take my own photograph of the portrait.  I've had it!   
 

44 W. 77th Street, Photo by Richard Caplan for

 "The New York Daily News,"  Aug. 23, 2012

Trebilcock’s old studio apartment is located in The Studio Building, a 1909 Neo-Gothic structure 14 stories tall designed by architects Herbert Spencer Harde and R. Thomas Short and built expressly for artists.  It sits alongside the broad boulevard portion of West 77th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West just across from the American Museum of Natural History.  Trebilcock's studio is the one above with the big windows.  There are 32 large units in the building, all with oversized and “articulated” windows that face the landscaped grounds of the Museum. Nearly all units have fireplaces, and many contain double height sunken salons.  One of the units is occupied by Aaron Shikler, now 91, who painted the iconic official portraits of Jack and Jackie Kennedy. 

Every time I go by this magnificent building on my way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art directly across Central park on Fifth Avenue, I say, “Boy, wouldn’t it be great to have a studio in that building.”

Leading this “news” item with Trebilcock was a bit of a tease, because the studio was actually built specifically for the renowned Vienna-born sculptor Karl Bitter.  To accommodate Bitter’s need to create giant sculptures, the developer gave him a work space measuring 27 by 45 feet, with a 24-foot ceiling and a huge, duplex-height wall of north-facing windows.  The Vienna-born sculptor was at the height of his career when he moved in.  He had fashioned monumental architectural works and public monuments everywhere and was leading the cause to create the famous Grand Army Plaza development at Fifth Avenue and 59^th Street in front of the Plaza Hotel.  He designed the "Pulitzer Fountain of Abundance" contributed by publisher Joseph Pulitzer and created the bronze statue of the Roman goddess Pomona, the goddess of abundance, which sits atop the fountain.

Karl Bitter, 1907 Photo

Karl Bitter, “Pulitzer Fountain of Abundance,” Grand Army Plaza

 Fifth Avenue and 59^th Street, Completed in 1916

Karl Bitter, Sculpture of Alexander Hamilton, Cleveland County 

Court House, 1914

The plaza development, which includes the golden equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was proposed by Bitter in 1898 and completed in 1916.   In the spring of the  previous year, in April, when Bitter was just 47 years old, he was struck and killed by an automobile upon leaving the old Metropolitan Opera House on West 40^th Street.   Here’s an account published in “The New York Times” on April 11th of that year:  “Mr. Bitter was in the prime of life and at the height of a useful and brilliant career.  He was an energetic man who felt perfectly able to take care of himself.  That is always a dangerous way to feel in Broadway, by the Opera House, at that time of night in the Opera season.  No man can be sure of taking care of himself on a street crowded with swift-moving vehicles…A passing taxicab masked a car on the far side of it; in saving his wife’s life, Mr. Bitter lost his own.”

Bitter was only able to enjoy his giant work space and living quarters for a few years in company with his wife and three children.  I assume the families of Bitter and Trebilcock occupied the space after the death of the paterfamilias, so the studio apartment has only had two other families in residence.  The current owners are serious art collectors, and they have taken maximum advantage of the huge space and view to host lavish parties with hundreds of guests. 

The former studio and now living room, Photo by Evan Joseph for

"The New York Daily News,"  Aug. 23, 2012

This former artist’s studio now offers the prospective buyer one of the most spectacular living rooms in the city, with a terrific view of the Natural History Museum and Central Park.  The great room also includes an 8-foot working stone fireplace built in the 17th-century on the Iberian Peninsula, and floor to ceiling Corinthian columns.   And here’s the really good news.  You don’t have to sleep on a cot in the corner.  The entire apartment has grown some over the years to 4,189 square feet, and includes three bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, a dining room, a den, a wine cellar and library, as well as assorted nooks and crannies.  I see that the current décor of the big room is not to the taste of the Internet “decorators,” who would love to fix it up “their way.”  So would I.

And wouldn’t this 1,215 square feet of floor space make for a great artist’s studio!

The ornate building itself was conceived by the developer Walter Russell as a follow up to his earlier artists’ studio buildings on West 67th Street, just off Central Park West.  That street has been designated The West 67^th Street Artists’ Colony Historic District.  Eight early 20^th Century buildings, including the Hotel Des Artistes, were all built to contain artists’ studios, and all have large two-story studio windows facing north.  I got to know several illustrators who worked in those buildings and frequented my hangout, The Art Students League.

The design at 44 West 77^th Street is a mix of traditional and high-ceiling “studio” apartments, with Bitter's studio being the largest.  In an exuberant review of that former workplace in the August 23, 2012 edition of “The New York Daily News,” Jason Sheftell wrote:  “In the day, light floods in. At night, the minarets of the museum appear like tops of lit temples in Marrakesh or Istanbul. With the exception of where kings and queens live, this might be the greatest salon of any city apartment in the world.  Adored by titans, infants and strong women with hearts of gold, it could be the greatest living room in the history of New York City.”

But wouldn’t it also make for a great artist’s studio again!