Talk:Jerome Myers

Neutrality

The main neutrality issue is article balance. Major portions of the article are reviews of the subject's artwork and the artwork itself. Second in priority, as a corollary to the reviews, is there are not enough references for the sheer number of quoted people and publications; in the review quotations section, there are no in-line citations for 27 instances. There are other unreferenced quotes in other sections, as well. The most minor concern is the writing, most of which is fine. Biased examples include: "For Jerome Myers, summer in Manhattan was rich in opportunity", "His strong interest and feelings for the new immigrants". Unrelated to neutrality, there is an open quotation in Summer in Manhattan section that begins "turning off here and there to glance". fds^Talk 18:13, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

• Hello, my name is Barry and I'm the creator of the Jerome Myers article that has been seen on Wikipedia for almost 5 years now. I should say I was concerned from the first day I started working on the article, that there would be no hint of bias in any of it. (A very good idea if you're the grandson of the subject.) I just want to take a few moments to preface my comments before entering into any detailed discussion of the issues that are summarized in the paragraph above, as well as in others examples given by Fdssdf. Let me first say I very much appreciate his efforts to try and improve the content of my article (working as a volunteer at Wikipedia, as so many generous other people do to help create the miracle that Wikipedia has become). Since my comments will also contain some criticism I think it appropriate that I provide a little background to some of the work I've been doing over the last 50 years. Some years ago I was named a Lifetime Member of the Writers Guild of America, East. My work in that capacity was largely in writing and producing for network television as well as doing live special events in New York City. Also about 25 years ago, because of my interest and work in the field of music, a friend, who was a leading music expert testifying in major trials involving copyright challenges over music authorship, asked if I might be able to find a way of using a computer to rapidly search through large quantities of music to locate similar or matching melodic ideas. It took some work, but I did find a solution. He and I then set up a business together. In the years since then I have worked as an expert preparing research and courtroom exhibits for some of the finest law firms in the country, and where I know every document I present can and will be challenged in court by lawyers from the other side, if its facts appear to be biased in any way. So I am very sensitive on this subject.

Still after a very careful review of the concerns expressed about the neutrality of the Jerome Myers article, I cannot find anything (nothing at all) to support such an analysis. I certainly would have no objection to making changes if they were needed, and as I reread the Myers page there are some changes as well as additions I probably will make in time, but nothing that relates to any evidence of bias. I am very concerned about the process and dangers of irresponsibly tagging a site without any review or understanding of the responsibilities associated with the process. One or more of Wikipedia editors seem to clearly provide this information at Wikipedia:NPOV_dispute

First I would like to point to what I believe is a misguided assertion of Fdssdf that "The tagging of neutrality is not a grievous blow to an article — far from it. Thousands of Wikipedia articles have their neutrality questioned by editors; it's the nature of Wikipedia's open source." This statement is simply not the case. He couldn't be more wrong. Even Wikipedia makes that concern absolutely clear. The following is from the top of the Wikipedia:NPOV dispute page:

   "Drive-by tagging is discouraged. The editor who adds the tag should address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific
   issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, 
   Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not
   neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort. 
   Also avoid over-tagging, using multiple redundant templates (e.g.  and ) for the same problem."

LET ME REPEAT THAT WARNING: SIMPLY BEING OF THE OPINION THAT A PAGE IS NOT NEUTRAL IS NOT SUFFICIENT TO JUSTIFY THE ADDITION OF OF THE TAG.

TAGS SHOULD BE ADDED AS A LAST RESORT! (AMEN!)

Let's now go back to his first comment on the neutrality issue (at the top of this page). • Fdssdf: The main neutrality issue is article balance. Major portions of the article are reviews of the subject's artwork and the artwork itself.

• Barry: If you are dealing with an artist whose principal years of activity and accomplishments were approximately from 1890 to 1930 you are not going to get many living people who knew him or could tell you about him or his work. Research would normally focus on written articles about him and his family over the years, his marriage, his artist wife, the couple's extraordinary daughter, Virginia. Events such as the prizes he won, and his major role in creating the world famous Armory Show of 1913 also are clearly important. But most important of all was the skill he displayed in capturing the life of the immigrants who crowded info the Lower East Side of New York and which remained his primary subject until his death in 1940. This biographical research reflected in this document gives much attention to the wide range of art critics and newspaper reviewers, who not only followed his career, but often commented in some depth about how much he was revealing in his pictures about a world that many New Yorkers knew little about. Those reviews and the pictures themselves represent the very heart of what this Wikipedia article should be telling its readers.

• Fdssdf: Second in priority, as a corollary to the reviews, is there are not enough references for the sheer number of quoted people and publications; in the review quotations section, there are no in-line citations for 27 instances. There are other unreferenced quotes in other sections, as well.

• Barry: How can the reviewer of this article point to all these unreferenced quotes and about no citation for 27 instances? The truth here is that every entry has been carefully and accurately referenced for anyone who wants to check it. Let me turn again to the Wikipedia's guidelines:

    "On Wikipedia, an inline citation refers to a citation in a page's text placed by any method that allows the reader to associate
     a given bit of material with specific reliable source(s) that support it."
    "Regardless of what types of sources are used, they should be reliable;  that is, credible published materials with a reliable
     publication process whose authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand."

• Barry: We're talking here about a whole range of highly credible major newspapers published in New York, or nearby, over many years and I have provided both their names and the exact dates in which each one of their quotations appears. Let's take the New York Times as example. A skilled researcher, such as myself, can take any of the publishing dates provided and immediately go to the Times' archives and be checking the exact article within 5 minutes. I can also capture a graphic of it at the same time.

• Barry: As for the idea that having a number of pictures displayed that Myers creatred over his life should perhaps not be included in the article, seems to make no sense at all. What could be more appropriate to a biography of any artist than examples of the artist's work, if available. Actually in this instance it provides a wonderful opportunity for readers to get a much more graphic picture of a very important place and period in American History, hardly more than a mile or two from the Statue of Liberty.

• Barry: Let me turn to another series of comments from Fdssdf regarding problems in the Myers article. It starts with a contact I made to Wikipedi"help" about the tagging of my article that I had no warning about. The text starts with a note to me from the person at Wikipedia then had made contact with Fdssdf:

• Houn: I have left a note for Fdssdf, the editor who tagged the article, and asked them to explain their reasoning at the article's talk page. (talk) 00:33, 15 July 2015 (UTC) • Houn: to Fdssdf: You added a POV tag to Jerome Myers. While I'd say the tone is rather flowery, I'm not sure I see a POV issue. Could you please explain your concerns at the article talk page? Thanks, Huon (talk) 00:29, 15 July 2015 (UTC) • Fdssdf: Greetings, Huon. Flowery language is biased language and, therefore, beyond neutrality for the subject, especially a biography. Examples: "a major event had taken place in Jerome Myers' life"; instead, editors should describe the event itself, not whether it's "major"; "For Jerome Myers, summer in Manhattan was rich in opportunity", a "rich" opportunity is in the eye of the beholder; "His strong interest and feelings for the new immigrants"; this has a cn at the end, and rightly so; and there are more, but there also are more just prose problems. The inclusion of a photographic gallery section is highly unusual, and its inclusion may go against neutrality, as well. Additionally, the number of reviews presented after the gallery might be too many to be impartial to the subject. These latter two issues concern article balance and structure. Have a good day! fds^Talk 16:37, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

• Barry: In reading that "flowery language is biased language and, therefore, beyond neutrality for the subject, especially a biography." Does anyone understand what Fdssdf is saying? (As a member of the Writers Guild of America, East, with many scripts to my credit I've never heard anyone approach the issue of bias in this way). It's not flowery language you have to look at, but rather the context of a piece of writing, in what way is it trying to influence you? Can you recognize a pattern of bias about something or someone?

• Barry: Let's look at the first example given of supposed bias "a major event had taken place in Jerome Myers' life;" instead, editors should describe the event itself, not whether it's "major."

• Barry: Who made up that rule? The paragraph is talking about an artist, early in his career, who suddenly learns a painting of his has been bought by the world famous Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It changes his life. Using the word "major" in this context is totally appropriate here. Writing is all about finding the best and most appropriate words to effectively communicate information to a reader, not only a dry fact, but its meaning in context. If we're talking about the invasion of Normandy as a fact in an encyclopedia, we might be remiss not to say it was the critical turning point in the Second World War. That's been long confirmed by history. Strong, effective words that give the reader a clearer view of history, or the character of a famous person in history should be what we all strive for. Of course, if we have a personal bias, we must be ever-alert that does not play a part in our choices.

• Barry: There are two other examples given, neither really showing any bias at all and written by the well-known historian, Bennard B. Pearlman, who researched and wrote those pieces for the Sloan-Myers exhibition. Pearlman's primary focus in his carefully-researched books has been in the very period of American Art in which these artists were most active. ("Revolutionaries of Realism," "Robert Henri: His Life and Art," "Immortal Eight," "Golden Age of American Illustration," "The Life, Loves and Art of Arthur B. Davies") The excerpts quoted were inspired from a very important and revealing profile of Myers by a New York Times reporter profiling him in 1906.

• Barry: My last comment is directed to Fdssdf's observation that "The inclusion of a photographic gallery section is highly unusual, and its inclusion may go against neutrality, as well. Additionally, the number of reviews presented after the gallery might be too many to be impartial to the subject. These latter two issues concern article balance and structure."

• Barry: Once again there isn't really much homework being done here? Does he really think that a photographic gallery is a highly unusual item to be found for artists in Wikipedia. Quite the contrary. In a very quick search here are four examples I found:

    William Glackens - 8 works + additional gallery of 8 works
    George Bellows - 5 works + additional gallery of 24 works
    Alexander Calder - 8 works + additional gallery of 11 works
    Diego Rivera - 7 works + additional gallery of 38 works

• Barry: And if you are doing a biography of a given artist, how could the inclusion of a group of his or her works possibly "go against neutrality as well" unless they were being compared side to side with pictures of other artists' works?

• Barry: Last of all I'd like to return to how damaging NPOV tagging could be in the real world. Let's say I was a 25 year old writer-researcher who has a chance at a really good job. In my interview about things I've done. one of the principal accomplishments I mention is the work I did in completing all aspects of the Jerome Myers article on Wikipedia. The possible employer who really seemed impressed with me on my interview, goes to view the Myers article and immediately sees the NPOV tag:

                 "The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. 
                     Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved."

• Barry: The very hopeful young writer then calls a few days later to find out what's happened. The employer, since he's sort of a nice guy, still picks up the phone, but all he tells the young writer is that the job isn't available any longer. He never mentions what he ran into in Wikipedia. That would be the most likely outcome. And the writer may have missed the best job possibility he'll see in years. He may never know why. And nobody at Wikipedia will realize the damage that has been done by just a simple act of careless tagging.

• Barry: A second example: This time it's me, the grandson of Jerome Myers. And a 70-year-old woman I know who owns quite a nice painting of my grandfather's calls me to say that some one has just seen her painting and is offering her $70,000 to buy it. The one other thing he would like to have is some more information about Jerome and his work. Though I'm not in any way involved with the sale of his pictures, I'm still very happy for her because she is planning to retire soon and the money would be a big help to her. I suggest to her that Wikipedia has a very good article on Jerome Myers and she might suggest that to her potential buyer. She is delighted and passes on the information. Unfortunately in this example I had no idea there had been a tagging of the article. The potential buyer goes online to read the article but sees the warning and immediately gets cold feet; He tells the woman he's not interested in buying into a controversy that might reduce the value of the painting. He's gone and so is her hope of a $70,000 windfall that may never come again. Of course, Wikipedia has had no way of knowing the consequences of that tag.

BEDownes (talk) 05:39, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

"Neutrality" vs. Multiple issues

The neutrality tag is not apt, but this article does have multiple issues that should be addressed:

1. It should be written in an encyclopedic tone. It should not be said in Wikipedia's voice "summer in Manhattan was rich in opportunity, for when the mercury soared it was certain to bring tenement dwellers out into the streets and parks of the city". There are multiple instances of this.
2. The amount of third-party quoted material is excessive and must be rectified. In addition, the huge chunk (possibly in toto) of the 1940 Art Digest obituary is a copyright violation. Whether it is in quotes or not is immaterial. The gist of all the quotes from art critics should instead be summarised in a critical reception section. And surely not every review or assessment of his work was as positive as these. Yet only positive ones are presented in the article. Unless absolutely no criticisms or reservations were ever published about his work (which I find very hard to believe), then the selection of quotes does violate neutrality.
3. There should not a whole section devoted to what one exhibition catalog from 2010 said about him. Simply use it as a source and do not break up the biographical narrative this way.
4. The massive collages are inappropriate. Images should be used very selectively and in a smaller gallery format, showing each one individually, and there should be a rationale behind the inclusion of each image. However, having a number of images of their work is not a violation of neutrality in a biography of a visual artist per se. In fact it's normal in such articles. Observe Caspar David Friedrich which is a Featured article.
5. I'm also concerned about the copyright status of many of the images, frankly. An image of each painting in the article, must have been published prior to 1923 for it to be in the public domain. It is not enough for the painting itself to have been made or even exhibited before that date. As Myers died in 1940, all his works, apart from those whose images were published in catalogues, journals, etc. before 1923 are still in copyright.

If I felt the article need tagging, I'd use something like:

Voceditenore (talk) 10:59, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Voceditenore. Although we disagree about the template, we agree on everything else: This article needs a lot of work and in those obvious areas I laid out above (though not as thoroughly as you did). Why I invoked neutrality was based on the weight of the quoted sections and the large section of art. The principal editor of this page, BEDownes, has scrounged up a lot of material, but I think quite a bit of it can be removed without damaging the article. However, if you suspect copyright infringements, shouldn't the Non-free template be used? fds^Talk 04:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Article changes

Fdssdf. I have begun trying to remedy the most glaring problems with the article and especially those areas that go against Wikipedia's guidelines/policy on quotation and copyright:

1. I have removed entirely the quotes from his autobiography. Some brief ones can be used where appropriate in the biography section if they are highly relevant. They can be found in this version. BEDownes, if you want to make these quotes available to a wider readership, I suggest you add some of them to another Wikimedia project, WikiQuote, which can then be linked from the article. But please read their copyright notice carefully. Note that Myers' autobiography is still in copyright.

2. I have removed entirely the obituary from The Art Digest, 1940. This is a copyright violation as it quotes way beyond the limits of fair use and works published after 1923 are still in copyright. Much of it is also waffle. I have incorporated one brief quote from it in the biographical section.

3. I have removed entirely the press quotes and placed them in the section below with further explanation.

4. I have restructured the biographical section with encyclopedic headings formatted per the Wikipedia Manual of Style. However, I am concerned at the material which was originally formatted like this and explicitly stated The Early Years - research and text by art historian, Bennard B. Pearlman [sic]. The footnote states:

Perlman, Bernard B.; John Sloan; Jerome Myers; Ken Ratner; Bennard B. Perlman; Darlene Miller-Lanning (2010). Ashcan humanists: John Sloan & Jerome Myers. Hope Horn Gallery, the University of Scranton.

BEDownes, is the text in that section of the Wikipedia article copied verbatim an/or very closely paraphrased from that publication? If so, it will have to be rewritten entirely or removed. If you only mean by that that Perlman was the author of the source you used but it was written in your own words, then you don't state that in giant bold letters as part of a heading. As I do not have access to that source, I am assuming for now that it is the latter case.

Voceditenore (talk) 10:28, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I've now replaced the collages with various singly presented works, all of which appear to be copyright compliant at Commons. I've also added some text and references (and repaired several other references). Oddly, the biography had never even touched on his family life, the cause of his death, or his legacy. There are now no more images than would be expected in an article about a visual artist and they are not displayed as giant collages which had provided no information on the titles or dates of the works comprising them and were thus of limited encyclopedic value. The excessive quotation, including that from work still in copyright, has been removed. The only remaining problem is the writing style which needs to be copyedited for encyclopedic tone (and quite a lot, in my view). Consequently, I have removed the {{POV}} tag and replaced it with {{copyedit}}. Voceditenore (talk) 15:13, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Quite well done. I did not have much interest in this article, even though I tagged it originally. However you were determined to fix what ailed it — no small task. Bravo, Voceditenore! fds^Talk 22:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, Fdssdf :). I actually enjoyed it. This is a very interesting artist and his article deserved the best presentation possible. This morning I went through the entire article, copyediting for encyclopedic style and tone, and have removed the {{copyedit}} tag. It should be OK now. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 13:51, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Quotations from newspaper reviews and articles

The following excessive and decontextualized quotation has been moved here. This material can be used to source a prose "Critical reception" section summarising the gist of the assessments, contextualising them with respect to the exhibition/work being reviewed. Any direct quotes used there must be very brief and need to be integrated into the running prose. Voceditenore (talk) 09:57, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Quotations

One may know the great east side fairly well, and yet it is a revelation to walk through it with so close a student of its life and its people as Mr. Myers has become. - NY Times – 6-1-1906 – (Life on the East Side His Art Inspiration) Let us recognize that the work of Sloan and a few others, such as Robert Henri, C.W. Hawthorne, William G. Glackens, Jerome Myers, and George Luks, is a natural and wholesome reaction from the vogue of frippery, tameness, and sentimentality. - 1907 (Story of American Painting in America) – Charles Henry Caffin The broad, free handling is that of a painter of more than technical powers. Mr. Myers must be reckoned among the mean of today and of many tomorrows in American Art. – Unidentified newspaper 1908 Reviews of Myers first solo exhibition in 1908 Twenty-five canvases by Jerome Myers, were placed on exhibition yesterday in the Macbeth Gallery. Those who know their New York well will appreciate these graphic and truthful representations. – New York Herald – 1-5-1908 (Myers one-man show at Macbeth) The poor we have always with us, but not always in the guise presented in the paintings by Jerome Myers, now being shown at the Macbeth Gallery, 450 Fifth Avenue. These are records of life on the east side and in out-of-the-way corners of the town that but few of us are familiar with. – NY Times 1-7-1908 (Myers one-man show at Macbeth) Nearly all of the examples picture existence by day and by night as the East Side dweller sees it and feels it. With these people Mr. Myers has sympathy: hence, nearly all of his work lacks prettiness. Possibly not one would be considered favorably by an Academy committee, and yet in many of them there is not only a record, but fine art, with color, with tone, and with atmospheric effect that remind you of the minor works by old Italian painters. – Brooklyn Daily Eagle – 1-1-1908 (Myers one-man show at Macbeth) Rembrandtesque would have been the epithet applied to some of these canvasses by the critics of an earlier generation. With all their apparent absence of variety they are, when closely studied, each after its style, very different. Many problems of atmosphere, clear and obscure and translucent, Myers has set himself to solve. Sometimes the effect of a street scene is that of a flat Pompeian mural decoration. Airless, the sharp snipped silhouettes of the children assume hieratic attitudes, yet they are vivaciously alive; it is not arrested motion as typified in a photograph. Street gossips meet. Bustle, animation, humor are before us in the life of the East Side. Sometimes as in a transparent breath, a summer night’s sultry envelope, men and women and children swim vaguely before our gaze. It is August and humid veils of steam descent upon the town. Blue black skies which show here and there a half smothered star; a bench at the end of an anonymous street. Upon a bench sit four or five of the disinherited of life. An old man’s reddish beard catches a gleam of light—the source is not shown; probably some remote lamp post; a woman props her head upon a skinny arm. There is despair in the pose. Two children in ambiguous whites are the highest notes in this subdued scale. Mystery, the mystery of Rembrandt, without his consoling magic, pervades “Evening On the East Side.”" - New York Sun, January 7, 1908 - James Gibbons Huneker (Myers' one-man show at Macbeth)'' Mr. Myers is an artist entirely, and in no sense a preacher, but because of the truth of his vision he can already move us very deeply. His work, tho already beautifully mature in color and decorative sense, is, we feel with pleasure, only beginning to say what we can expect from this man...Here, in one month, we have Childe Hassam giving us a view of New York's outermost appearance that shows us what a fairyland it is in color and form, and Jerome Myers showing us how, even within the darker recesses, in full view of the sadder side of life itself, there is still beauty for the man with eyes to see. A group of drawings by Mr. Myers shows almost more certainly than the quality of his color the fineness of his grasp of his material. We are not likely to have this winter anything better in itself and more promising for development in the future than this exhibition. - The Independent (Art Magazine) - January 1908 (Myers one-man show at Macbeth)'' Reviews of Myers' work in other shows Mr. Myers has above most of his contemporaries a keen appreciation of the drama of the city, and with his feeling for color at once chastened and heightened, his canvases would take their place in the front ranks of contemporary art. – NY Times – 12-1-1908 His work is a valuable record of a side of life in this city which cannot but change completely in another score of years, and, moreover, it is art and art of a high character. – NY Times – 5-2-1909 One need merely pass through Mulberry Street to know that childlike gaiety and even grace exist there and in other tenement quarters of the city. Mr. Myers has the happy turn of mind to see the dingy truth in all its dinginess and yet preserve the loveliness of color and tone that blooms never more flowerlike than among the picturesque byways swarming with the children of transplanted races. – NY Times – 5-9-1909 Jerome Myers, who is represented by two admirable pictures, is so fully recognized as a master of his technique that one takes from him without comment work which is in an extremely high rank of expressive draughtsmanship ... At all events, this little picture of New York life (Night), tingling with character and actuality, yet conveying a sense of the monumental by the nobility of the composition and the large modeling of the forms, should it find its way into one of the great collections of the future, may be trusted to hold its own as representative of an extremely important phase of twentieth century painting. – NY Times – 10-31-1909 With the three street subjects by Jerome Myers we swing into the composite life of the city and get the harsh and stirring note to which the great unconscious army of our new civilization marches. Apparently we are not to be a somber race, since above the misery of the east side rises the love of strong color and play. No one has done more than Mr. Myers to make us realize what the open spaces and organized pleasures of the city mean to the people at large, which is a matter apart from his art, but has the connection with it to be claimed for every subject to which appropriate artistic expression has been given. – NY Times – 1-15-1911 Myers has a skill, but he has more than skill, he has sympathy that is boundless and a clairvoyant humor that is the highest truth. – The Evening Mail, NY – 4-4-1911 But no one has recorded its accidents and incidents with so large and optimistic a sympathy; no one has shown its strange blossoms of exotic beauty with such natural and unpremeditated appreciation; no one has recorded its somber moments with such respect for their solemnity. His imagination acting upon his essentially vivid materials accentuates its vitality, so that in looking at his drawing we feel this little stage to be the real world and all the rest unreal. As a technician his most noteworthy success is in his use of line, and in America he has few rivals in this respect; but his reading of humanity raises him above the rank of mere technician to that of artist and poet. He does not simply illustrate, he illuminates his subject. – NY Times – 4-9-1911 (Madison Art Galleries Exhibition) As for Mr. Jerome Myers' paintings, each one in turn gave a sense of fresh apprehension of the extraordinary art of this man of simple quiet canvases. How well he understands city life, how beautifully he makes you see the joy in the hearts of his ragged little children, as well as the grief in the souls of the somber aged, was shown in his six paintings which really form a record of his insight into the realities of life and the beauties that are hidden deep in some seeming sad realities. – The Craftsman – January 1912 (MacDowell Club Exhibition) Jerome Myers for several years has been showing New Yorkers the artistic possibilities of what is perhaps the unique part of the city's scenes. He has discovered these subjects for himself and treats them in his own way. It is never the exciting moments of street life that move him, only the daily happenings, the usual things that all may see. Boys and girls playing in the square, the crowd at a recreation pier, an organ-grinder followed by a troop of dancing children, old people whom the night freshness lures to the park-bench or the wharf, a religious festival in Little Italy—these are his favorite themes and he renders them with loving sincerity and a profound appreciation of their significance. – Metropolitan Museum Bulletin – 6-5-1912 (on museum purchase of The Night Mission) There are other engaging pictures. In Pursuit of Pleasure, by Jerome Myers, a group of children following a hurdy-gurdy, reminds one of the harmony between the picture by Mr. Myers and that by Whistler hung side by side at the Metropolitan Museum. – New York Times – May 31, 1914 (Summer exhibition at Macbeth Galleries) For the artist, for the humanitarian, for the lover of all truth about human nature these etchings of Jerome Myers are sure to bring a keener interest in and enlarged vision of beauty, a greater appreciation of the etching's line as a means of unfolding human life for us, and a finer understanding of humanity in its franker, simpler expression. – The Craftsman - October 1915 (Jerome Myers as an Etcher and Student of Human Nature - Gustav Stickley, Editor) But Myers does insist that whatever truth is presented by a realist shall be nothing but the truth. I remember his annoyance upon observing in a picture of the East Side a wash line suspended across the street. He had lived and worked in that district for thirty years and never had he seen such a thing. Yes, he has lived in the lower East Side for so long a time that it is home to him. He draws and etches and paints the life of the people there with such rare sympathy and insight because he has made himself one of them. ...But Myers has not always that smiling twinkle in his eye. There are moods of intense sadness in the man. So well does he know the human body (one would say with a physician's as well as with an artist's knowledge) that his sympathy is expressed in poignant lines. We know how the little boy feels as he swings high up over one of those dusty, dreary, necessary playgrounds, and we share the backache of the old man on the park bench, the pitiful comfort of the hard-seat after his painful walk. ' – Jerome Myers by Duncan Phillips – 1917 (Magazine of art, Volume 8 Page 481, American Federation of Arts)''

Death date

In going over the article, I noted that the infobox gave the death date as 29 June and the opening sentence gave it as 19 June. I have gone for 19 June since that is the date given in his New York Times obituary published on 20 June. It is also the date given in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, and the catalogue of American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum. But note that The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art gives 29 June as does the chronology in Jerome Myers Papers, 1904-1967, Helen Farr Sloan Library & Archives, Delaware Art Museum—a misprint in the latter replicated in the former? – Voceditenore (talk) 16:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for catching the error on my part for Jerome's death. I think it probably carried over from the Myers Chronology at Delaware The date was definitely June 19,1940. I will need to check I haven't carried my mistake into any more documents. I certainly appreciate the degree of care and concern That has been given to the article as a whole. It certain speaks well of Wikipedia and the quality of volunteers it attracts. I apologize for getting a bit grumpy when I first encountered the original tagging and neither had warning, nor even any explanation posted on the talk page. --BEDownes (talk) 00:35, 25 July 2015 (UTC)