Firemen's Dinner for Brancusi, 1926
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of the artist
This painting commemorates a stag dinner organized by painter Walt Kuhn on 27 February 1926, at the Tip Toe Inn on New York's East Fourteenth Street. The theme of the party was the "Union Square Volunteer Fire Brigade"; the guests were supposed to look like firemen from the 1860s. Although the sculptor Constantin Brancusi, then on his first visit to New York, was the guest of honor, he does not appear in the painting. Calder depicted himself dancing on the bench at the upper right.