Frenchman in Manhattan

Marcel Gromaire, heading up the bay on his first trip to the U.S., was bowled over last fall by the Manhattan skyline. He knew, from pictures, what it must look like, but the pictures had not prepared him for the real thing. "Sticking out of the morning mist, it was one of the most lyrical sights I've ever seen...Everything I recognized as familiar had assumed huge, fantastic proportions." He stayed in the U.S. a month, then hurried home to Paris, while his eye was still fresh, to paint his recollections in a series of 20 oils and watercolors.

Gromaire's impressionistic Manhattan, on show in Paris last week, is an overwhelming place. His Brooklyn Bridge is a gigantic stone and steel hammock slung between topless towers. Times Square at Night is a glaring latticework of light and darkness. "The shock of Times Square was almost brutal," Gromaire says. "I have seen photos and colored prints of the 'Great White Way,' but they are empty and meaningless when compared with reality."

The pictures testify to Gromaire's neck-cricking wonder at the upward thrust of the skyscrapers. One of the best catches the silhouette of an old landmark, Trinity Church, against the spectacular escarpments of Wall Street. Says Gromaire: "Now I am completely exhausted, like a mother after childbirth. If you asked me to paint just one more picture about America, I couldn't do it." As for living and working in Manhattan, Gromaire shakes his head. "New York is astonishing, but so are the Himalayas. I wouldn't like to spend the rest of my life in the Himalayas."

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