Shop and Warehouse of Duncan Phyfe, 168–172 Fulton Street, New York City

Shop and Warehouse of Duncan Phyfe, 168–172 Fulton Street, New York City

John Rubens Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

For many years this watercolor had been attributed to the New York portrait and landscape watercolorist John Rubens Smith. More recent scholarship suggests that the artist was an amateur--perhaps even an employee of Phyfe’s shop--familiar with engraved images of manufactories and shops of the kind printed on business cards and furniture labels and in newspaper advertisements. The picture corresponds almost precisely to such imagery, for example, in the way the buildings completely fill the picture space and in the contrived presentation of the shop’s wares in the central doorway.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Shop and Warehouse of Duncan Phyfe, 168–172 Fulton Street, New York CityShop and Warehouse of Duncan Phyfe, 168–172 Fulton Street, New York CityShop and Warehouse of Duncan Phyfe, 168–172 Fulton Street, New York CityShop and Warehouse of Duncan Phyfe, 168–172 Fulton Street, New York CityShop and Warehouse of Duncan Phyfe, 168–172 Fulton Street, New York City

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.