A reclusive, rebellious painter captures the “sinister magic” of a moonlit city street

Born into wealth and privilege on a New Jersey estate in 1864, Louis Eilshemius wasn’t your typical New York City painter. The income his father made from an importing business gave him the means to travel through Europe, study at the Art Students League, and ultimately settle down and spend the bulk of his reclusive life in his family’s brownstone at 118 East 57th Street. Inside this gaslit anachronism of a house, Eilshemius (below, in a 1915 self-portrait) raged at an art establishment that mostly ignored him and wrote endless letters to New York City newspapers attesting to his genius. He also painted. Shunning the artistic trends of the era, he created darkly romantic, almost surrealistic nudes and landscapes that reflected a “sinister magic,” according to one critic covering a retrospective of his work in 1977. One luminous example is the nocturne above, from 1908, plainly titled “City Street in Moonlight.” Where is this scene? It’s almost impossible to know for sure, as…