Our Winter Art Show

The billboard for Held by the Enemy in Ernest Upper’s The Fire Engine on Broad Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey (left) dates the painting about 1889, the year William Gillette’s play opened there. The shop signs and window displays offer extraordinary documentation of a commercial district in an American city, but upper’s real subject is the handsome steam pumper. He painted it in vivid detail, down to the small brass plate that reads: “Rebuilt by I. N. Denmisson, Newark, N.J.”