Exploring images of a vanished Baltimore
Jacob Glushakow painted everyday Baltimore — its people, its neighborhoods, the harbor, the markets and, perhaps most significantly and poignantly, its vanishing urban landscape.
Now the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) is exploring bygone Baltimore through its new exhibition, “Images of a Vanished Baltimore: The Art of Jacob Glushakow.”
The eldest child of Russian Jewish immigrants, Jacob Glushakow was born at sea in 1914 on the ship Brandenburg, traveling from Bremen, Germany, to Philadelphia. The family, after fleeing Ukraine just days before the outbreak of World War I, settled in East Baltimore where Glushakow was raised with his 10 brothers and sisters at Eden and Baltimore Streets.
The young Glushakow graduated from City College in 1933 and attended the Maryland Institute of Art and the Art Students League in New York. But in interviews throughout his career, he also credited much of his art education to his visits to the fine arts department of the Enoch Pratt Central Library.
Until the end of his life, in 2000 at the age of 86, Glushakow sketched and painted more than 1,000 works of his hometown. He lived in Mount Washington, painting in a rustic barn-studio, and also taught art for many years at the Jewish Community Center.
Paintings of everyday life
In his detailed and vibrant compositions, often painted with electric turquoises, saturated oranges and rusty browns, Glushakow honored the importance of the day-to-day activities and settings of everyday folks — from people sitting in a park, to workmen lounging at the harbor, to the interior of a tailor’s shop or a neighborhood junk store.
When asked about his work in one interview, he described his powerfully rendered images as “emotion recollected in tranquility,” quoting poet William Wordsworth.
“He made the commonplace scenes and objects of life tell stories,” said MdHS chief curator Alexandra Deutsch. He focused especially on East Baltimore, where he had grown up, as well as Druid Hill Park and Reservoir Hill.
Upon Glushakow’s death, former Sunpapers art critic John Dorsey said, “Glushakow’s art was realist but also symbolic. He found nobility in the ordinary aspects of the city, and by extension in the ordinary life as well.”
“Jacob’s dream was to have his paintings at the Maryland Historical Society,” remarked his sister, Helen Glushakow, who is one of the family members responsible for donating approximately 50 paintings and hundreds of drawings and sketches to the museum. About 40 of his landscapes and portraits are on display in the current exhibition, which runs until March.
“This gift offers us so many opportunities to interpret life in 20th-century Baltimore,” said Deutsch. “His art provides glimpses of the everyday, but it tells big stories about this city’s history. His work puts the viewer on the ground in Baltimore as it looked in the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.”
A lost cityscape captured
According to MdHS president Burt Kummerow, much of early Baltimore architecture has disappeared over the years to neglect and wrecking balls.
“An amazing collection of large, impressive 18th and early 19th century buildings — marvels in their own day and built in a port that traded with the world — fell prey to a restless society that was more interested in moving forward than preservation,” he said.
“We are indebted to the intrepid artists who have left a record of vanished America both in paintings and photographs,” he added.
“During the years after World War II, when the early brick fabric of Baltimore’s downtown was becoming rubble at a rapid rate, Mr. Glushakow recorded everyday scenes on street corners and row house blocks in center city. The dozens of paintings that are on display in our galleries add an engaging slice of life…for a look at a more recent past that many of us will remember,” Kummerow said.
While Deutsch acknowledges the power of Glushakow’s cityscapes, especially as they depict both urban decay (“he brought an artist’s eye to the ugliness of neighborhood decline”) and urban renewal, she finds his portraits — for which he is less well-known — especially intimate and emotional.
“They’re really quite extraordinary,” she said, citing several portraits painted throughout the artist’s life, as well as portraits of his mother: an early — and lifelong — champion of his artwork.
Deutsch and Kummerow are both excited about the significant enhancement to the museum’s 20th century holdings that the Glushakow collection brings.
“We’re shifting our collecting emphasis to the 20th and 21st centuries in order to be more comprehensive,” said Deutsch. She suggests that in the future she would like to pair Glushakow’s work with that of 20th century photographers to compare how the different media approach the subject of Baltimore’s changes over time.
Though Glushakow’s paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Phillips Collection in Washington, Deutsch does not believe he has gotten the attention he merits.
“He’s a very significant artist,” she said. “In the canon of Baltimore’s 20th century artists, he is not that well-known, and he is somewhat stereotyped by his subject matter. I hope, through the attention we will be able to give his work, he will be thought of in a much more meaningful way.”
The Maryland Historical Society is located at 201 W. Monument St. The museum and library are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday (museum only).
Adult admission is $9 ($7 for seniors). Admission is free on the first Thursday of every month. For more information, call (410) 685-3750 or visit www.mdhs.org.