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George Bellows, "Club Night," 1907

"George Bellows’s paintings devoted to boxing were among the most popular pictures he produced during his lifetime and remain so today. Executed in August and September 1907, Club Night is the first of three similar boxing subjects that Bellows painted early in his career, from 1907 to 1909. Club Night represents a fight at an athletic club in New York City owned by Tom Sharkey, a former heavyweight champion. The enactment of the Lewis Law in 1900 prohibited boxing in New York State, but Sharkey and others circumvented the law by staging bouts in their private 'clubs,' where attendees paid membership dues instead of admission fees to a particular fight, allowing them to legally gamble on matches. The public’s generally positive response to this controversial subject reflected an ambivalent attitude toward the sport. Some regarded boxing as a savage, brutal pastime, but many thought it a natural manifestation of masculinity. When criticized for not accurately representing certain technical aspects of the sport, Bellows responded, 'I don’t know anything about boxing. I’m just painting two men trying to kill each other.' In addition to precedents in the work of the American realist Thomas Eakins, Bellows’s boxing paintings paid homage to the European painters recommended to him by his teacher and mentor, Robert Henri. Whereas Bellows later drew inspiration from the rich black tonalities and biting satire of the 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Goya for Both Members of This Club, the smoky, atmospheric haze that envelops the scene in Club Night and Bellows’s painterly technique and rendering of the crowd owes much to the great 19th-century French painter and caricaturist, Honoré Daumier."

National Gallery of Art

Preliminaries of the Big Bout, 1916, lithograph

"George Bellows is of the Ashcan School and the school of hard knocks: both institutions are rooted in realism. Bellows' interest in boxing coincided with the rise of other realists, though of different dimensions. The author Jack London and president Teddy Roosevelt were ascendent, immensely popular figures with turn of the century, hardscrabble Americans. At the time London was writing, Roosevelt was bullying, and Bellows was painting, the sport of boxing was drawing immense crowds across the country. There is a raw, primal intensity to Bellows' paintings of boxing matches. With slashing brushstrokes of thickly applied paint, he is able to capture the animal violence and muscular brutality of man. The energy and intensity of the bout is captured in both the clashing pugilists and in the frenzied crowds surrounding the ring. 'The atmosphere around the fighters is a lot more immoral than the fighters themselves,' Bellows once remarked. In 'Club Night' above, the ring is illuminated by an overhead lamp, keeping the focus on the violent ballet in the center. ..."

The Art of Boxing: George Bellows

The Knock Out, 1907, ink & pastel on paper

NGA: The Art of Boxing—George Bellows at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Video)

John Sloan, "Night Windows," 1902

"In 1904, John Sloan married Anna ‘Dolly’ Wall and the couple moved from Philadelphia to New York, settling in Chelsea. The neighborhood had a shabby bohemian quality that appealed to them. According to Sloan’s second wife, Helen Farr Sloan, the artist first conceived of the etching series called New York City Life as he pounded the pavement in search of illustration work in Manhattan. ... The New York City Life series included thirteen etchings in all. Sloan completed the first ten between 1905 and 1906 and added three more between 1910 and 1911. As a set, they demonstrate Sloan’s ability to narrate anecdotal aspects of urban life. Night Windows, from 1910, depicts just the sort of scene Sloan might have observed from his apartment window. Sloan’s habit of peering into private homes in order to gather material for his paintings and etchings suggests a rather unseemly voyeuristic tendency. Here, with a clear sense of irony, he satirizes the practice of voyeurism."

"The print depicts apartment buildings at night, the darkness suggested by emphatic cross-hatching. The perspective suggests that the artist—and the viewer—are high up, perhaps in the apartment across the way. At left, a housewife leans out of her window to tend to the laundry hanging on the line. Behind her stands a child whose face is contorted as if he is wailing. Above them, the shadowy figure of a man is perched on the roof. Smokestacks, chimneys, and the facades of taller buildings surround him. His back is to us, and he leans slightly to the right. His position directly above the mother and child suggests that he, too, is an occupant of their apartment. Perhaps he has fled to the roof in order to escape the din or to smoke. Regardless, his attention has been attracted by yet another figure, a buxom woman dressed only in a nightgown, who occupies an apartment in another building. As she gazes out at the night and raises her hands to her hair, her sensuous form is outlined by the brightly-lit window. The man leans intently in her direction. Without even being able to see his face, the viewer knows that he is gazing at the other woman. ..."

Reynolda House Museum of American Art

May 2015: John Sloan: Spectator of Life

The World of William Glackens - The C. Richard Hilker Art Lectures

"The painter William Glackens (1870–1938) and his friends were among the liveliest and most influential American artists of the opening decades of the twentieth century. Their continued importance in the history of American art is explored in this informative collection of essays. Colin Bailey chronicles the beginnings of Albert C. Barnes’ unparalleled collection of modern art, as well as Glackens’ role in forming it, and Avis Berman investigates the friendship of John Sloan, Robert Henri and John Butler Yeats. Carol Troyen examines George Bellows’ war paintings and Richard J. Wattenmaker probes the relationship between Glackens’ paintings and sketchbooks. H. Barbara Weinberg documents how the leading American Impressionists and members of The Eight dealt with the pressures of economic survival. This profusely illustrated publication is an essential reference for curators, collectors and historians."

ArtBooks

"The second volume of The World of William Glackens expands the story of American art in the early 20th century. Teresa Carbone highlights a breakout work by Glackens, while Charles Brock shows how alternative exhibitions of American modernists changed the art world. The fertile artistic location of Philadelphia is the backdrop of Judith Barter's essay and Marc Simpson discusses Philadelphia's Thomas Eakins and his affection for Paris. This volume also includes lectures given by Avis Berman, Carol Troyen and Sylvia Yount at a 2014 symposium held at the Barnes Foundation in conjunction with the first major exhibition of Glackens' work in 50 years."

ArtBooks - Volume II

"Once derided as a slavish admirer of Renoir, the painter and illustrator William Glackens is among the most intriguing and underestimated participants in the first wave of 20th-century American modernism. That perception is confirmed by the enlightening and overdue, if still deficient, survey of his dappled canvases and dazzling drawings at the Parrish Art Museum here. It should be required viewing for anyone interested in the period. ... This show reveals an inveterate Francophile who quickly moved beyond Ashcan realism to develop a late, Americanized version of Impressionism; it may not have changed history, but it still looks fresh and even original. Containing 60 oils and nearly as many works on paper, spanning from 1896 to the 1930s, this show is the first comprehensive Glackens survey in nearly 50 years. It has been organized by the art historian and writer Avis Berman and is a collaboration among three museums: the Parrish; the Museum of Art at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which has a large cache of Glackens’s work and was the show’s first stop; and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which will take it in November. ..."

NY Times: The Beauty of the Everyday

amazon: The World of William Glackens

Edward Hopper, "Compartment C Car," 1938

"... On looking at a picture, we may recognise it as important to us, but out of our ordinary reach. By buying a postcard reproduction and hanging it prominently above the desk (as I have done with a number of Hopper’s works), we may be trying to have it as an omnipresent, solid token of the emotional texture of the person we want to be and feel we are deep down. By seeing the picture every day, the hope is that a little of its qualities will rub off on us. What we may welcome isn’t so much the subject matter as the tone; it is the record of an emotional attitude conveyed through colour and form. We know we will of course drift far from it – that it won’t be possible or even practical to hold on to the picture’s mood forever, and we will have to be many different people (with bold opinions and a sense of certainty, with casual wit and parental authority) – but it is a reminder and an anchor that will tug us back to the qualities within it. Hopper also took an interest in cars and trains. It is a pity he didn’t live long into the jet age, though we sense his shadow in many contemporary works. The artist was drawn to the introspective mood that travelling seems to put us into. He captured the atmosphere in half-empty carriages making their way across a landscape: the silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat in rhythm against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the noise and the view from the windows – a dreaminess in which we seem to stand outside our normal selves and have access to thoughts and memories that may not emerge in more settled circumstances. The woman in Hopper’s Compartment C Car 293 1938 seems in such a frame of mind, reading her book and shifting her gaze between the carriage and the view. ..."

Tate: The pleasures of sadness

"Hopper also took an interest in cars and trains. It is a pity he didn't live long into the jet age, though we sense his shadow in many contemporary works. The artist was drawn to the introspective mood that travelling seems to put us into. He captured the atmosphere in half-empty carriages making their way across a landscape: the silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat in rhythm against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the noise and the view from the windows - a dreaminess in which we seem to stand outside our normal selves and have access to thoughts and memories that may not emerge in more settled circumstances. The woman in Hopper's Compartment C Car 1938 seems in such a frame of mind, reading her book and shifting her gaze between the carriage and the view. Hopper's people give the impression of being people attempting to escape something. They are involved in themselves and cannot seem to get their lives straight. They escape the society of others, and would like to escape themselves. They are not really at home anywhere, neither in a room nor outside, neither at work nor at play, neither alone nor with others. That is why they are on the move. Their home is a train station, a highway restaurant, a gas station, a hotel or motel, a train compartment, a snack bar, a theater foyer, a movie house. They are going somewhere without being able to arrive. They have personality traits that seem mutually exclusive. They are mobile and restless, yet statically tied to some location from which they will probably never escape."

Edward Hopper

"Compartment C, Car 193 is possibly my favourite ever piece of art. Like all of Hopper’s paintings there is a disquieting sense of unease as the dark, sinister and almost foreboding exterior threatens to infringe on the comfort of the train carriage. There is an overbearing sense of solitude and loneliness, again typical of Hopper’s art. The fact that the woman is reading is symbolic of isolation. She is immersed in her own world, closed off within herself. There is also a story to tell- where is the woman going? What is she reading? Is she alone in the carriage? I never tire of looking at this painting. I think more than anything it is the atmosphere that strikes a chord with me. It is one of subtlety and melancholy. Timeless. Everybody has at some point taken a train journey home at night. Think of that journey and the painting takes on a whole other depth of meaning. ..."

From the rooftops

Robert Henri, "Café du Dome (On the Boulevard Montparnasse),” 1892

"Robert Henri (1865–1929) was a colleague, friend, and rival of William Merritt Chase, and one of the most influential painters in America in the early twentieth century. He was born Robert Henry Cozad, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was a property developer, and soon moved the family to Nebraska, where they were inaugural residents in the new town of Cozad. However, his father became embroiled in a dispute over land, leading to Cozad Senior shooting the other man. Young Robert fled to Denver, Colorado, where he was joined by the rest of the family. He changed his name to Robert Earl Henri and posed as an adopted son. When he was eighteen, the family moved to New York City, and on to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he started to paint. His formal training began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1886. Two years later he went to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, but failed to gain entry to the École des Beaux-Arts. Before he left Europe in late 1891, he had also visited and painted in Brittany and Italy. ..."

On the Marne, 1899

"... In the mid-1890s, Henri moved away from the Impressionism which he had valued so much during his training, referring to it as the “new academicism”. He urged others to join him in seeking fresh and gritty subjects in contemporary American cities, so becoming a founder of the Ashcan School. Friendship with the Canadian painter James Wilson Morrice introduced Henri to sketching en plein air on small panels or pochades, a technique which he used to make quick oil sketches in cities. He was successful in having portraits accepted for the Paris Salon of 1896 and 1897. In 1897 he also had a solo show in Philadelphia, which attracted the attention of William Merritt Chase, who introduced him to the art world of New York, and invited him to teach at Chase’s own art school in New York. ... On the Marne (1899) pays homage to Impressionism in showing some of its most important scenery, the river Marne, which was a popular motif for several of Cézanne’s paintings. This view is unusual in its elevation above the river, which perhaps signifies his determination to move on. Following his return from Paris, in 1902 he started teaching at the New York School of Art; his more notable students there included Joseph Stella, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, and George Bellows. ..."

Into the Light: Robert Henri and the Ashcan School

Spain, 1902

Reginald Marsh, “Subway, 14th Street,” 1930

Reginald Marsh painted everything in his New York of the 1930s and 1940s: Bowery crowds, showgirls, forgotten men, Coney Island beachgoers, tugboats, panhandlers, and shoppers. So of course he would take his sketchpad and chronicle New Yorkers using mass transit underground. In 1930 he painted ‘Subway, 14th Street,’ showing a crowd of city residents rushing en masse to or from the train, each absorbed in his or her own world. If only the newspaper headlines were a little easier for viewers to read!

Ephemeral New York: The crowds inside a 14th Street subway station

John Sloan, "Flowers of Spring," 1924

"John Sloan’s fame rests primarily on his robust images of New York City life during the first decades of the twentieth century. Sloan and his wife, Dolly, had moved to New York from Philadelphia in 1904. From 1915 to 1927 their apartment and his studio were on the top floor of 88 Washington Place in Greenwich Village. This studio (and a previous studio on an upper floor) gave Sloan a view of street life from an elevated vantage point, which he frequently incorporated into his paintings. Some of these pictures showed a bird’s eye view, well above the fray. In others, like 'Flowers of Spring,' Sloan places the viewer only one or two stories above the street and involves him in the scene - the flower salesman seems to be calling out directly to the spectator. In his book 'Gist of Art,' a compilation of his teachings, Sloan commented on the paintings that documented his own experiences in the neighborhoods of the city. ..."

MFA

"Few artists painted the moods, rhythms, and rituals of the seasons like John Sloan, who moved to New York from Philadelphia in 1904 and spent the early 20th century in Greenwich Village—living and working for almost a decade at 88 Washington Place. His windows facing Lower Sixth Avenue 'gave Sloan a view of street life from an elevated vantage point, which he frequently incorporated into his paintings,' states the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston. A real-life wagon loaded with vibrant flowers was the inspiration for his 1924 painting 'Flowers of Spring,' which belongs to the MFA. As Sloan (at left in a self-portrait from 1890) himself recalled in his book Gist of Art: 'This picture has, in a very direct, simple way, handed on the thrill that comes to everyone on a wet spring morning from the first sight of the flower huckster’s wagon. The brilliant notes of the plants surrounded on all sides by wet, city grays.' Sloan’s beloved wife, Dolly, is the woman on the left with the umbrella."

Ephemeral New York: Spring flowers arrive on a rainy Village sidewalk

Theresa Bernstein, “New York Street,” 1912

"She may not have reached the same level of success as fellow social realist painters Robert Henri (with whom she exhibited her works at art shows) and William Merritt Chase (her teacher at the Arts Student League in the 1910s). But painter Theresa Bernstein did overshadow her male Ashcan school contemporaries in one way. Born in 1890 in Poland, Bernstein lived just shy of her 112th birthday—and that enabled her to paint scenes of city life in almost every decade of the 20th century.

In Central Park, 1914

A New Yorker since 1912, Bernstein spent much of her adult life living with her husband, painter William Meyerowitz, in a rent-stabilized West 74th Street studio near Central Park.

In the Elevated, 1916

Her early work reflects the people she saw going about their lives outside her window, as well as the events of the time, from European immigrants on the bow of a ship heading toward Ellis Island to Armistice Day celebrations to Suffrage meetings.

Brighton Beach, 1916

Bernstein often depicted crowds too, particularly in rich, dark tones. Mothers and children were another popular theme, perhaps because Bernstein’s only child died at age 3 of pneumonia. (She reportedly doted on a niece, who grew up to be singer-songwriter Laura Nyro.) Her Jewish identity figured into her art as well, with scenes inside New York’s synagogues in the 1910s and 1920s.

Baby Carriages Laundry Day, 1923, Park Slope

Navigating the art world as a woman proved to be challenging. 'As a woman crossing the gender threshold at the beginning of the new century, Bernstein experienced the excitement of that moment but was not spared the indignity of discrimination,' states the Jewish Women’s Archive. 'Either paying a reluctant compliment or implying criticism, reviewers often described her work as having a masculine style.'

Waiting Room, Unemployment Office, date unknown

Her figurative style may have fallen out of favor as Abstract Expressionism took hold. But Bernstein never stopped painting, putting images of everything from postwar life to hippies in Central Park down on canvas. Her work can be read as almost a list of milestones and movements in the 20th century—or how one woman experienced 112 years of history.

Saturday Morning Upper West Side, 1940s

Asked in a New York Times article from 1990 how she felt about being overlooked throughout her career, she replied: 'I never got frustrated, because I didn’t expect anything. I enjoyed painting the works I did. I didn’t do it for public acclaim.' An extensive look at Bernstein’s life and work can be found here."

Ephemeral New York: A New York artist paints the 20th century city

W - Theresa Bernstein

NY Times: Theresa Bernstein, an Ash Can School Artist, Dies at 111

Theresa Bernstein

George Bellows, "The North River," 1908

"Bellows’s friend during his formative years as a painter in New York was Robert Henri, a former student at the Pennsylvania Academy, who shared his love of the painterly approach of old masters such as Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Goya. These were artists much admired by the French Impressionists as well. Bellows’s use of a heavily impastoed surface and a wide variety of noticeable brush marks in this work suggest a combination of older precedents in terms of technical virtuosity and newer Impressionist subjects the railroad and steamboat). Although Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro had introduced these themes into their Impressionist paintings as early as the 1860s, American Impressionists did not begin to incorporate them until the turn of the century. A scene along the Hudson River just above New York, 'North River' was shown in the 1909 annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy and acquired for the permanent collection. In this work and the other winter landscapes he executed along the Hudson River in 1908, Bellows came closest to adopting an Impressionist approach. He maintained an interest in landscape throughout his career, although his later paintings tend to be smaller in scale, even sketch-like in execution, or vehicles for his experiments with color."

PAFA

"... While the pastoral hills had been landscaped, the railroad still ran through (the train tunnel would be built by relief workers during the Depression). Civic groups decried the intrusion of industry and rail travel on nature, but Bellows manages a harmony reminiscent of modern artists, and even photographers. John Pfahl’s late-nineteen-eighties series of smoke from Bethlehem Steel’s smokestacks raises the same question that Bellows does: What is a cloud? Bellows’s 'North River,' painted in 1908, looks down past the snow-covered bench on the hills of Riverside Park, past working piers and ships exhaling steam as they work along the white-watered, steel-blue river. ..."

New Yorker: Go See Bellows

"The building of Pennsylvania Station was one of the heroic feats of early modern American engineering, rivalled only by the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. The station was to be modelled on the Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome. A monument for modern Manhattan, connecting New York with Boston, Philadelphia and Washington DC, its creation required the razing of four entire blocks of the city and the cutting of many miles of tunnel under the East River and Hudson. The digging became a great public spectacle, with thousands of onlookers peering over the edge of the craterous void to watch the clattering work of steam-driven shovels and the ceaseless shuttling to and fro of spoil-removal trains. The artist George Bellows joined the crowds one night in 1908, not long after construction had begun, and painted a vivid if notably murky impression of the scene. ..."

Telegraph: An American Experiment, at National Gallery, Seven magazine review

"There aren't many depictions of the dead of winter that are finer than this landscape. It's a grandiose painting. Winter has the city and river almost in a death grip, yet the ice hasn't formed to block the river. The surface of this picture is so vibrant it seems to still be wet after nearly 100 years. The texture and handling of the paint are thrilling. If one were to judge based just of the handling of paint, there is no more accomplished painter than Bellows, an underrated genius. This is the first painting that Bellows sold to a museum."

mystudios

Everett Shinn, "The Canfield Gambling House," 1912

Gouache on paper

"... Here we are presented with another drab scene of urban life in New York City. It’s winter, and by the looks of the couple hurrying away under an umbrella, it’s quite cold outside. A horse, carriage, and driver wait in front of the gambling house, and both figures look rather unhappy to be out in the quiet, snow and ice-covered streets. ..."

An Introduction To American Realism In 12 Works

"Everett Shinn (1876 – 1953) was the youngest member of the Ashcan School (sometimes called 'the Eight'). He frequently explored not just urban street life, but also theatre and various aspects of luxury and modernity in New York City. Shinn’s interests were wide ranging, including not just painting but also theatre and movie scene design (imdb credits Shinn with scene design in at least four early films), play writing and acting. He’s perhaps best known for painting the enormous murals in the Oak Room at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Sadly, the Oak Room closed in 2011 — although Shinn’s vaunted murals were reportedly preserved. The Plaza says the Oak Room will re-open soon, and here’s hoping that’s true. View of the Oak Room, Plaza Hotel, New York City, showing one of Everett Shinn’s famous murals. This photo taken from the Plaza Hotel website: http://www.theplaza.com. Shinn’s early work was typical of the Ashcan School — gritty urban realism in the tradition of Robert Henri and John French Sloan. Gradually, however, Shinn’s interest became more lyrical. He traveled to France where he was impressed by the paintings of Edgar Degas, and his natural interest in theatre carried him in a new and arguably more romantic direction. ..."

Girl Onstage, 1906

"... Degas’ influence is clearly on display in Shinn’s work, both in terms of subject and method. I would argue Shinn remained committed to realism throughout his career. Shinn’s realist bent was perhaps obscured by his focus on theatre, which is itself, by its very nature, an engine of fantasy. Like Degas, however, Shinn faithfully rendered theatre in the best realist tradition. In my estimation there’s never been a better portrayer of the New York theatre and social scene than Everett Shinn. His paintings give a priceless insider’s view into that world and are quite interesting and stunning."

Everett Shinn: From Street Scenes to Stage and Screen

Left to Right: Everett Shinn, Robert Henri and John French Sloan (c. 1896)

Edward Hopper - No. 3 Washington Square North

Hopper's propaganda poster won first prize

"As Docents, we often tell the story of Edward Hopper’s modest lifestyle and of the small studio in Greenwich Village that he shared with his wife Jo where they both worked and lived, carrying buckets of coal up four flights of stairs to the very end, at age eighty-five. But to tell the story is one thing; on February 8, the Whitney’s Docents had the opportunity to have a tour of the space on the corner of University Place and Washington Square Park—now owned by New York University (NYU)—that was once the Hoppers’ studio and home. To see it in person gave us a different kind of insight. We could look out over Washington Square and imagine the quaint village that was already a nostalgic imagination in Hopper’s time. The coal burning stove is still there along with the four flights of stairs. The nook that was their kitchen certainly underscores the simple quality of their lifestyle. There was no bathroom in the flat; they shared with neighbors downstairs."

Whitney: Seeing Hopper’s Studio

"This wonderful two-minute video will take you inside Edward and Jo Hopper’s New York City studio in 1965. Presumably clipped from a documentary of some kind and put on YouTube by L’Atelier des Archives, the black-and-white footage shows the two artists hard at work in their adjoining studios, with Hopper tackling his painting 'Chair Car,' which looks almost complete. The sound quality is awful, but you can just make out the narrator attempting to channel the somber mood of Hopper’s art in his voiceover: 'The old-fashioned stove between them has been empty and cold for years.' ('He is a painter of truth,' the narrator says later.) And then the elderly couple — Edward died two years later, Jo within the year that followed — trudge down the front steps and out to Washington Square Park. Bundled in their coats and hats, they sit on a nearly empty bench and read different pages of a single paper shared between them. They belong to their surroundings yet look slightly out of place, like they could be characters themselves in Hopper’s painted world."

A Glimpse of Edward and Jo Hopper in Their Studios (Video)

"... From December 1913 until his death in May 1965, Edward Hopper lived at 3 Washington Square North. His early neighbors included Collin Cruickshank and Walter Tittle, with whom he had attended art school. At first he lived in a studio apartment on the fourth floor of the rear building on the property, which was entered from Washington Mews. His wife Josephine Nivison joined him there after they were married in 1924. In November 1932 they moved into a brighter space on the fourth floor of the studio building that faced Washington Square Park, which included two rooms overlooking the Square. The larger front room became Hopper's studio. The couple remained in the building for many years, despite Spartan living conditions: they shared a bathroom with neighbors until 1941 and did not have central heating until 1959. New York University sought unsuccessfully to evict Hopper and his fellow tenants in late 1946. Despite Hopper's long settlement on Washington Square, he depicted the neighborhood only rarely. Between 1926 and 1932, he painted an oil and three watercolorsfeaturing the chimney pots and skylights on his own roof. In November 1932 he celebrated his liberation from the rear studio by creating a watercolor and charcoal drawing.and oil paintinglooking out across the Square toward Judson Memorial church. Hopper authority Gail Levin has noted that the artist treasured the new 'sense of opening - of openness just outside, that he could look out to, no matter how small his own interior space might be.' Typical of Hopper's approach, in the oil he gives no indication of the bustling activity associated with life on the Square, projecting instead a mood of solitude and silence. Hopper's study of the art of Edgar Degas in the 1920s led him to adopt unusual perspectives and angles of vision. As in some of his most evocative city pictures, Hopper pictures a dramatic sky streaked with color hovering about a moody and desolate landscape."

The City Review

Edward Hopper in his studio. 1948

"In the mid-19th century, the problem of unwanted babies born to unwed mothers was a serious problem. The stigma surrounding a bastard birth often resulted in infants being abandoned on the steps of churches of orphanages, or worse, simply discarded. Dr. Parry told the Social Science Association in 1871 'The mothers become outcasts from society if their indiscretion is made public, so that but one of two courses is left for them to pursue—to rid themselves of the burden by criminal means, or to abandon it.' ... The Sun quoted her as saying 'The evil would never be remedied until men were punished as well as women. Women were ostracized, deprived of every hope for the future, while man, the enticer, seducer, the perpetrator of the crime, held up his head as high as ever, and was to be met the same as before in the church, the state, and worse yet, in the drawing rooms.' Despite some backlash, the Foundling Hospital thrived and in 1873 moved to larger quarters on East 68th Street. The nuns’ departure was the first step in what would be the end of the aging mansion on the still-fashionable Washington Square. Greenwich Village was quickly becoming the artist colony of New York. The nearby 10th Street Studios Building had been constructed in 1858 solely to provide housing and proper studio space for artists. ..."

Daytonian in Manhattan

W - Waverly Place

William Glackens, "Battery Park," ca 1902-04

"... Glackens's subject matter and style changed throughout his life. Influenced by the Impressionist work he saw during his stay in Europe, Glackens's early work uses ‘dark, dramatic colors applied vigorous in slashing brushstrokes.’ He depicted scenes of urban life in Paris and its suburbs. He continued this style and subject matter for some time until he began to break away from The Eight. At that point his most common subject matter was landscapes, especially beach scenes. Later Glackens became best known for his portraits, and late in his life he focused on still lifes. Despite the changing subject matter, Glackens's work always emphasized the reality of life and also the happiness. He 'sought beauty and found it where conventional eyes saw ugliness.' Watson asserts that Glackens focused on color because 'the color of the world makes him thoroughly happy, and to express that happiness in color has become his first and most natural impulse.' He painted because he wanted to show the beauty of the world. His paintings are 'haunted by the spectre of happiness, obsessed with the contemplation of joy'. ..."

Hoocher

"The Battery by William Glackens Battery Park is a 25-acre (10 ha) public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City, facing New York Harbor. The area and park are named for the artillery batteries that were positioned there in the city's early years to protect the settlement behind them. Battery Park City was named after the area. In 2015, the New York City Department of Parks and the Battery Conservancy announced that the park would revert to its historic name, The Battery. William James Glackens (March 13, 1870-May 22, 1938) was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School of American art. He is also known for his work in helping Albert C. Barnes to acquire the European paintings that form the nucleus of the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. His dark-hued, vibrantly painted street scenes and depictions of daily life in pre-WW I New York and Paris first established his reputation as a major artist. ..."

Fine Art America

Gifford Beal, "American Freight Yards," 1915

"... Though railroad lines started in the late 1820s and crossed continental America in 1869, the locomotive and the workings of the railroad do not take center stage in American art until the twentieth century. Fascinated by the working waterfront, [Gifford] Beal chose as a subject the active Sixtieth Street Yards of the New York Central Railroad that followed along the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan. Trains, tracks, and machines fill two-thirds of the canvas with a web of activity. Painted as cool lavender silhouettes, the cliffs of the New Jersey palisades rise in the background. Gifford Beal was born the year after Sanford Gifford painted the work... Sunset New York Bay in 1878. In the thirty-seven years that separate these two paintings of the active New York harbor, the view of industry had changed dramatically. Notice, for example, the way each artist portrayed clouds of smoke and steam generated by machines. With his broad, choppy strokes of paint, Beal makes his clouds exuberant and nearly as forceful as the machines that produce them. ..."

Everson Museum of Art - Two Hundred Years of American Art: 1746-1946

John Sloan, "The White Way," 1926

"... The bustling city streets and crowded tenements supplied the artist with stimulating new subject matter, as seen in this work, which depicts bundled-up pedestrians on a snowy evening at the corner of Broadway and Fifty-Third Street. Recalling the chilly evening in which he sketched this scene, Sloan later commented, 'The realization of my surroundings had been frozen in my memory, but I feel that my suffering has been compensated for.'”

Philadelphia Museum of Art

"... John Sloan had the most love of crowds of any member of the Ashcan School, a name that by then had fallen into disuse. Times Square still has the general configuration it did then in Sloan's 'The White Way' (1926), which is full of theatergoers headed to movies, vaudeville or the legitimate theater. The title is a mild pun, for the streets are filled with snow, underscoring the determination of the entertainment seekers. ..."

NY Times

JAMA: The White Way - Kristen M. Quaranta

Eugene Higgins, "Midnight A.M."

"Eugene Higgins, a painter and etcher, represented with sentimentality the impact of the homeless, depressed and less fortunate people of society. His passionate sympathy for the poor led him to generalize situation and location, painting archetypal situations rather than observed ones. Although a Social Realist in subject matter, his style was European, much influenced by Honore Daumier, and this Old World quality made his work less popular than that of others such as Robert Henri, who had a more unique style. Higgins was born the son of an Irish stonecutter and builder in Kansas City, Missouri, 1874, and after the death of his mother, his father moved him as a youngster to Saint Louis, where he was raised."

askART

Alms for the Poor

"Eugene Higgins was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1874. He began drawing at an early age but had very little formal training. His parents were Irish immigrants and his mother died when he was four years old. Eugene and his father lived in boarding houses in St. Louis. Many years later Higgins acknowledged that the earliest influence on the development of his artistic style was Michelangelo, whose works his father, a stonecutter, deeply admired and taught him to appreciate. Another early influence was the art of Millet, whose illustrations he discovered at age twelve in a copy of St. Nicholas magazine. Most significant in those formative years, however, was the environment in which he grew up. St. Louis, Missouri, was the scene of yearly floods, bringing every form of human misery and often tragedy. What Higgins witnessed, experienced, and heard made an indelible impression and formed the basis of his artistic expression. From the very start and consistently throughout his life, he was the artist of the poor, the lonely, and the down-trodden, portraying them in the drama of their human existence but always with understanding, compassion, and Christian resignation. Years later when asked why he constantly painted the poor, his answer was '... because they are most interesting and real ... the poor just appeal to me because of their dignity.' His artistic style having been established at a comparatively early age, it is not surprising that when Higgins traveled to Paris to broaden his knowledge and further his experience in art, he was relatively unaffected by the new art movements that were emerging at that time. ..."

Saint Joseph College Gallery

Out Of Shadows, Etching on paper, the plate size

William Glackens "Street Cleaners, Washington Square," 1910

"... The collection tells a compelling story of American art and artists - not only the charming homely tale of native artisans, but also a modern saga, beginning with William Glackens. ... Barnes's buying trips to Europe are well documented, but given his predilection for the new and controversial, he surely also traveled to New York in 1913 for the notorious Armory Show, the event that introduced Americans to Modern Art. Barnes would have loved the confirmation of his bold tastes in art and certainly would have relished the vitriolic reviews and the uproar over the show's so-called 'barbaric art'. The Modernism on view at the Armory Show wasn't exclusively foreign, so Barnes would have seen the revolutionaries of American Art hanging side by side with the European avant-garde. Glackens had work hanging in the show, as did John Sloan, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast and others loosely grouped as 'The Ashcan School' painters rebelling against conservative American tastes with realistic genre scenes of ordinary life in New York's gritty streets. Even though many of the American works that Barnes chose to include in his collection are relatively minor or at least mild (with an abundance of works on paper), it's a significant holding nevertheless. Glackens dominates it by quantity, with 71 paintings and drawings, including genre scenes such as Street Cleaners, Washington Square (1910) and The Little Pier (1914.) Glackens, as much a Renoir enthusiast as Barnes, was sometimes called 'The American Renoir,' especially after he began distancing himself from the darker tendencies of the Ashcan School. ..."

Those overlooked Americans at the Barnes

Lewis Hine (1874 –1940)

Addie Card, 12 years. Spinner in North Pormal (i.e., Pownal) Cotton Mill. Vermont, 1910.

Wikipedia - "Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an Americn sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States. ... Hine led his sociology classes to Ellis Island in New York Harbor, photographing the thousands of immigrants who arrived each day. Between 1904 and 1909, Hine took over 200 plates (photographs) and came to the realization that documentary photography could be employed as a tool for social change and reform. ... In 1908 Hine became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), leaving his teaching position. ... In 1913, he documented child laborers among cotton mill workers with a series of Francis Galton's composite portraits. Hine's work for the NCLC was often dangerous. As a photographer, he was frequently threatened with violence or even death by factory police and foremen. At the time, the immorality of child labor was meant to be hidden from the public. Photography was not only prohibited but also posed a serious threat to the industry. To gain entry to the mills, mines and factories, Hine was forced to assume many guises. At times he was a fire inspector, postcard vendor, bible salesman, or even an industrial photographer making a record of factory machinery. ..."

Wikipedia

Shorpy Higginbotham, a ‘greaser’ on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co in Alabama. He said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. He carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars. Photographed in December of 1910.

Child Labor in America 100 Years Ago

"At the start of the 20th century, labor in America was in short supply, and laws concerning the employment of children were rarely enforced or nonexistent. While Americans at the time supported the role of children working on family farms, there was little awareness of the other forms of labor being undertaken by young hands. In 1908, photographer Lewis Hine was employed by the newly-founded National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) to document child laborers and their workplaces nationwide. His well-made portraits of young miners, mill workers, cotton pickers, cigar rollers, newsboys, pin boys, oyster shuckers, and factory workers put faces on the issue, and were used by reformers to raise awareness and drive legislation that would protect young workers or prohibit their employment. After several stalled attempts in congress, the NCLC-backed Fair Labor Standards Act passed in 1938 with child labor provisions that remain the law of the land today, barring the employment of anyone under the age of 16. ..."

The Atlantic

Some of Newark, New Jersey's newsies, in December of 1909.

Child Labor in America: Investigative Photos of Lewis Hine

"... From 1908 to 1912, Hine took his camera across America to photograph children as young as three years old working for long hours, often under dangerous conditions, in factories, mines, and fields. Hine was an immensely talented photographer who viewed his young subjects with the eye of a humanitarian. In 1909, he published the first of many photo essays depicting working children at risk. In these photographs, the essence of wasted youth is apparent in the sorrowful and even angry faces of his subjects. Some of his images, such as the young girl in the mill glimpsing out the window, are among the most famous photographs ever taken. ..."

The History Place: About

The History Place

A young worker in an American glass factory circa 1920

Two young workers, a raveler and a looper, in Loudon Hosiery Mills in Loudon, Tennessee, in December of 1910.

Bibb Mill No. 1 in Macon, Georgia, on January 19, 1909. Some young workers were so small they had to climb up on the spinning frame to mend the broken threads and put back the empty bobbins.

1910 Breaker Boys Working in Ewen Breaker, Pennsylvania Coal Co.

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