{"data":{"id":"125","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":125,"topgoose_id":14817,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":125,"title":"Pittsburgh","display_date":"1927","accession_number":"31.177","dimensions":"Overall: 34 1/4 × 40 1/4in. (87 × 102.2 cm)","medium":"Oil on canvas","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eElsie Driggs, \u003cem\u003ePittsburgh\u003c/em\u003e, 1927. Oil on canvas, overall: 34 1/4 × 40 1/4 in. (87 × 102.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.177. © Estate of Elsie Driggs\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePittsburgh\u003c/i\u003e was inspired by a view from a train window that Elsie Driggs saw as a child, riding past the city’s steel mills at night. Years later, remembering how the spewing smokestacks tinted the nocturnal sky with sulfurous hues, she returned to Pittsburgh to make studies for a painting. She discovered, however, that the production of steel had changed over the years and the mill was using a new process that no longer discharged smoke into the sky. She sketched the buildings anyway and returned to her studio to paint \u003ci\u003ePittsburgh \u003c/i\u003ewith a palette of greys. Driggs exhibited the painting in New York, where her gallery declared it an exemplar of a “new classicism,” and she herself called \u003ci\u003ePittsburgh\u003c/i\u003e her \"Piero della Francesca\" in honor of the fifteenth-century painter, who inspired her with his \"desire for structure and order, simplicity and strength.\" \u003ci\u003ePittsburgh \u003c/i\u003emay be a devotional image for a twentieth-century faith, but the monolithic gray smokestacks rising above the haze seem inescapably dark and menacing, suggesting that Driggs may have been questioning America’s newfound faith in technology.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"Several large, dark industrial pipes and smokestacks with a cloudy sky in the background.","alt_text":"Dark smoke stacks towering against a gray sky","visual_description":null,"on_view":true,"created_at":"2017-08-30T17:22:33.000-04:00","updated_at":"2025-08-25T01:30:10.823-04:00","display_artist_text":"Elsie Driggs","images":[{"id":71787,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/125/31_177_cropped.jpeg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"378","type":"artist"}]}}}}