Robert Andrew Parker: Walt Whitman's Brooklyn Printshop

An original illustration by Robert Andrew Parker shows Walt Whitman's printshop at 99 Ryerson Street in Brooklyn where Leaves of Grass (1855) was completed. The watercolor was created for The New Yorker, but not published. In 2010, the art was sold by Antiquarian Auctions.

https://antiquarianauctions.com/lots/original-artwork-for-a-re-imagined-portrait-of-99-ryerson-st-the-house-where-whitman-wrote-at-least-part-of-leaves-of-grass

Then in 2020, it was offered for sale by Honey & Wax Booksellers of Brooklyn:

Robert Andrew Parker
AbeBooks Listing Retrieved April 5, 2020

https://www.abebooks.com/Original-watercolor-depicting-Walt-Whitmans-Brooklyn/30607251936/bd?cm_ven=nl&cm_cat=trg&cm_pla=want_CM&cm_ite=readmore

The New Yorker apparently declined to publish Parker's illustration, electing instead to publish a  pair of historic photos in the issue of June 12, 1995. Upon examination of the photo of 99 Ryerson, a problem with the watercolor illustration is immediately apparent: Parker has omitted the distinctive elevated profile of the building's center section. The poet Marianne Moore wrote, “Robert Andrew Parker is one of the most accurate and at the same time most unliteral of painters." In my opinion, and perhaps The New Yorker's, the most prominent architectural feature should not be rendered "unliterally."

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1995-06-12/flipbook/098/

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