Greenwich Village/ Architectural & Art History/ Women Artists.  KLITGAARD, Kaj (1883-1953) (artist)/ RUDGE, William Edwin (publisher)  [New York, 1927] Map of Greenwich Village made for The Whitney Studio Club. 23 x 29 ½ inches. Color process print.  Expertly conserved & mounted on mulberry paper, lightly toned; several closed marginal splits and chips, a few extending unobtrusively into printed surface; map area vibrant & clear, side margins faint as originally printed; generally good condition.                                                                                    

A very rare, minutely detailed pictorial map of Greenwich Village, at the time the center of the emerging modern art movement, made on behalf of the Whitney Studio Club, whose interior is shown in the view.  Founded by the heiress, art patron and artist,  Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942) in 1917, the club evolved to become in 1930 The Whitney Museum of American Art.  Greenwich Village of the 1920s as depicted here was the seedbed of the modern art movement in the United States, and this delightful view with its combination of whimsy, experimental printing techniques, and numerous miniature portraits of artists vibrantly expresses the proudly bohemian spirit of its denizens at the time.

Very rare:  Not in OCLC or in market or auction records; we’ve located examples only in the Rumsey collection and at the University of Nebraska.  The evident rarity of this work and the lack of imprint suggest it was a private, non-commercial publication, likely for the membership of the Whitney Studio Club.

Notwithstanding the at times lighthearted approach of this work, it is a valuable historical source, as it depicts in fine detail all of the buildings as well as the flavor of cultural life in this epicenter of the modern art world.  A review of it upon its publication in the magazine The Arts pointedly expresses this aspect of it: “We reproduce a map of Greenwich Village by Kaj Klitgaard which was commissioned by The Whitney Studio Club and might be described both a neighborhood map and as a historical record of the Village that is passing before the inevitable march of apartment houses from the north and wholesale business from the south.”

The map is oriented with south at top, extending from just north of 14^th Street to a part of Spring Street in south, seen at upper left.  Union Square is at lower left, and Washington Square is at left center below the cartouche, while just to the south a magnifying glass highlights the interior of the building that housed the Whitney Studio Club.  Piers along Eleventh Avenue at right include ocean liners and several other kinds of nautical craft.  In addition to individually rendering all the buildings in the area, the view includes all manner of period and whimsical detail.  Surrounding the cartouche are mini portraits of club members, and lightly printed in the side margins are larger caricatures of members at work.  In the top left and right margin corners, also lightly printed, are verses by the journalist, John Reed, celebrating the convention-snubbing, bohemian life style of the club.  Illustrations of blimps and biplanes are also in the top margin. Fitting the anything-goes reputation of the Village, a pink, nude, Icarus figure flies beneath the cartouche with tiny propellers mounted to his feet and a skyscraper on his head, while holding up more tall buildings on a silver platter. Several clouds hovering over the view contain highly miniaturized, indecipherable text, suggesting that the original artwork from which this print was made was considerably larger.  Indeed, in 1927, a New York Times article on an exhibition at the Studio Club mentions the original artwork as measuring 6 x 4 ½ feet-- https://www.nytimes.com/1927/12/25/archives/the-whitney-studio-club-three-artists-exhibit-their-work-a-show-is.html

We have dated the map to 1927 based on a listing of correspondence beginning in 1927 between the map artist, Klitgaard, and the publisher, William Edwin Rudge. This coincides with the year that a review of the map appeared in the magazine The Arts, mentioned above.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was the leading patron of progressive American art from 1914 to her death in 1942.  In 1907, she purchased a building on MacDougal Alley in Greenwich Village and converted it to studios for herself and other artists, adding exhibition galleries the following year. In 1914 she founded the Whitney Studio Club in a nearby townhouse to nurture New York artists through exhibitions and art instruction. By 1931, she had consolidated four buildings into the Whitney Museum of American Art, the first museum exclusively devoted to 20th-century American art, especially non-academic artists. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was also a successful artist in her own right, including major public sculpture commissions.

Kaj Klitgaard was a Danish-American painter, novelist, author and seaman. He wrote several books in both Danish and English, including the novel The Deep (1941). In 1937 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to research what would become a study of contemporary American regional landscape painters Through the American Landscape (1941); the University of North Carolina Press reissued that book in 2017. He also illustrated books, some that he authored and some by others, such as The Voyage of the Beagle (1932) about Charles Darwin’s travels. His artwork, writings, and memorabilia are in the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

William Edwin Rudge (1876-1931) was a New York City printer and publisher, known especially for high quality art books. His New York Times obituary stated: ”Any account of American printing written during the last twenty years has placed the name of Mr. Rudge in a small group of not more than two or three artist-publishers who devoted themselves largely to limited editions wrought with the greatest care for appreciative purchasers.” Many books published by Rudge incorporated the designs of Bruce Rogers, such as the limited edition of Private Papers of James Boswell From Malahide Castle.  Rudge was born in Brooklyn and began working at age 12 in the printing trade, eventually establishing his own publishing firm under the name William Edwin Rudge, Inc. From 1918 on he received numerous medals and top awards in annual printing exhibitions held in New York and Philadelphia. In 1925 the U.S. Secretary of Commerce chose him to represent the printing industry at the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris. His papers are in the archives of the University of California Santa Barbara.

Brackett, Carolyn. “Whitney Studio: Haven and Legacy for Early 20th-Century American Art.” National Trust for Historic Preservation. https://savingplaces.org/stories/whitney-studio-haven-legacy-early-20th-century-american-art#.Yfm04y1h3Fw (1 February 2022); “Kaj Klitgaard Papers.” Syracuse University Libraries.https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/k/klitgaard_k.htm (28 January 2022);Watson, Forbes. “Exhibitions in New York: A New Map.” The Arts. Vol 12, No. 6. December 1927. p. 327; Online at Google Books: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Arts/J_VGAQAAIAAJ (28 January 2022); “William E. Rudge, Art Printer, Dies.” New York Times. 13 June 1931. p. 10. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1931/06/13/97855309.html?pageNumber=10 (28 January 2022).

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