Skip Navigation

Trinity Church and Wall Street

Bertram Hartman

American Art

On View: American Art Galleries, 5th Floor, The City and the Rise of the Modern Woman, 1900–1945
Skyscrapers loom above older buildings, planes fly overhead, and people crowd the sidewalks in this dramatic bird’seye view of Manhattan’s Wall Street. Bertram Hartman’s meaning may not be quite so straightforward, however. He painted Trinity Church and Wall Street in the year of a great stock market crash that devastated the nation’s economy. By showing the gothic spires of Trinity Church overshadowed by skyscrapers, Hartman may have intended his viewers to contemplate the relationship between spiritual and material needs in modern life.
MEDIUM Oil on canvas
DATES 1929
DIMENSIONS 50 x 30in. (127 x 76.2cm) frame: 55 1/2 x 35 1/2 x 2 in. (141 x 90.2 x 5.1 cm)  (show scale)
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 30.1109
CREDIT LINE John B. Woodward Memorial Fund
RIGHTS STATEMENT Copyright status unknown
The rights status of this object is unclear and requires further research. Copyright for this work may be controlled by the artist, the artist's estate, or other rights holders. A more detailed analysis of its rights history may, however, place it in the public domain. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
CAPTION Bertram Hartman (American, 1882-1960). Trinity Church and Wall Street, 1929. Oil on canvas, 50 x 30in. (127 x 76.2cm). Brooklyn Museum, John B. Woodward Memorial Fund, 30.1109 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 30.1109_PS1.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 30.1109_PS1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2007
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.