Fourth Street and Jones, New York City

Description

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Anne Ryan studied art in college, but until the age of 45 she was occupied with her roles as poet, wife and mother. After a brief sojourn in Europe, where she immersed herself in the artistic milieu of the day, she moved in 1933 to a small apartment in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Her neighbors in Greenwich Village, sculptor Tony Smith (1912–1980) and abstract painter Hans Hofmann (1880–1966), both encouraged Ryan to try her hand at painting.
"Fourth Street and Jones, New York City," completed when Ryan was 50, is one of her earliest canvases, representing her surroundings in New York. Ryan later achieved success in woodcut printmaking, and at age 65, she learned yet another art form, the mixed media collage. She created nearly 400 collages in the 6 years prior to her death. In addition to these achievements, she also continued to write poetry. One month before she died, Ryan wrote a poem about working with oils on canvas, which opens with the lines: "The comedy of paint/Has its own underlying terror."
(A. Dixon, 20th Century Gallery installation, June 1999)