John Ross Key's world's fair paintings

On July 31 the St. Louis Globe-Democrat announced that a series of color reproductions of Key's world's fair paintings would be distributed free with every Sunday edition. These views, the announcement proclaimed, would "far surpass any other World's Fair views which have been or will be issued." (19) The original oil painting for the color print distributed in the August 21 issue has survived, Festival Hall and the Grand Basin (Pl. X). Promoting this print, the newspaper resorted to hyperbole:

It's hard to "paint the lily," but the genius of Mr. Key has
accomplished wonders, and his painting is one which will be admired and
cherished as a fitting memento of the fairy-like spot and a highly
prized souvenir of the greatest World's Fair in all history. (20)

Key's portrayals of the Chicago, Omaha, Buffalo, and Saint Louis expositions are the most effective, and sometimes the only, color images of these events. The fairs were among the last affirmations of the idea of inevitable human progress caused by the emergence of science and technology working in concert with the liberal arts in a democratic political system. Two world wars, a depression, and a cold war that threatened global annihilation ushered in a darker vision of human potentiality. The modern movement in art drove Key's paintings into the basements of historical societies and the attics of private houses. In the last several decades, a growing reevaluation has brought neglected American art back to visibility. Key's gondolas (see Pl. XI) may have led the artist to think of himself as a latter-day Canaletto (1697-1768). And perhaps the best of his paintings, like those of the great eighteenth-century scene painter, will pass the test of time.

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1 The major biographical source about Key is Alfred C. Harrison Jr., "John Ross Key, American Painter" (unpublished monograph. North Point Gallery Archive, San Francisco).

2 See Alfred C. Harrison Jr., "Bierstadt's Bombardment of Fort Sumter reattributed," The Magazine ANTIOUES, vol. 129, no. 2 (February 1986), pp. 416-422. The painting is now in the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina.

3 Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, April 16, 1890, p. 4.

4 Key was not the only painter in Chicago whose works appeared as chromolithographs. Childe Hassam did a series of paintings of the World's Columbian Exposition that were published as color supplements in the Chicago Times, and other artists such as Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) and Charles Graham (1852-1911) had color prints made of their paintings. See Peter C. Marzio, The Democratic Art: Pictures for a 19th-Century America: Chromolithography, 1840-1900 (David R. Godine, Boston, and Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Forth Worth, Texas, 1979), pp. 201-205, for a discussion of chromolithographs of the World's Columbian Exposition, and also pp. 313, 343.

5 American Paintings from the Collection of Mrs. George Arden, Part I, Christie's, New York, May 22, 1991. Lot 119 (illustrated in color). I am indebted to Lesley Martin of the Chicago Historical Society for information about Key's Chicago chromolithographs.