The city of Brooklyn had already surrendered its autonomy to become a borough of Greater New York when Paul Cornoyer painted this muted downtown scene (right) in the early 1900s, but its citizens still tended to see it as an independent entity—as, indeed, they do today. With the opening of the bridge in the 1880s, the population had grown to seven hundred thousand, and despite its raucous neighbor across the river, Brooklyn was a very substantial town in its own right, as Cornoyer’s painting suggests. The artist was born in Missouri in 1864, studied in Paris, and there learned to love both impressionism and noble urban spaces. He eventually settled in New York City, and although he could produce a pretty landscape when he wanted to, his reputation rests on his city scenes.