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The opening years of this century were boom
years for American cities. Filled with office and factory
workers, shopkeepers and immigrants, cities bulged and spread.
The city's vigor and variety attracted a band of artists
who were to revolutionize American Art. These men were "The
Eight"- Arthur Davies, Robert Henri, William Glackens,
Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, John Sloan
and Everett Shinn. Their group exhibition in 1908, a
couple of years before the Armory Show, both shocked and
educated contemporary taste. Spurning the safe road of genteel
society portraiture, for which they were all trained, The
Eight painted men and machines at work, women at leisure.
In time their brand of personalized realism earned them
the nickname, "The Ashcan School". This kind of painting
was called the Ashcan School because the artists were said
to have taken their subject matter from the ash cans and
alleyways of the city rather than from the boulevards and
gracious homes as did their predecessors, the Impressionists.
(quoted from http://www.huntermuseum.org)
Offers a fresh exploration of a major American artistic movement.
Features works by the Ashcan artists and their circle, including
George Bellows (see opposite), William Glackens, Robert Henri,
Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, George Luks, Guy Pène
du Bois, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn and John Sloan,
among others. Complemented by lively essays on the world of
leisure experienced and depicted by the Ashcan school.
Picturing the City takes an innovative look at the group of
urban realists known as the Ashcan School, and at the booming
cultures of vision and representation in early twentieth-century
New York. Offering fresh insights into the development of modern
cities and modern art in America, Rebecca Zurier considers what
it meant to live in a city where strangers habitually watched
each other and public life seemed to consist of continual display,
as new classes of immigrants and working women claimed their
places in the metropolis. Through her study of six artists—George
Bellows, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett
Shinn, and John Sloan—Zurier illuminates the quest for
new forms of realism to describe changes in urban life, commercial
culture, and codes of social conduct in the early 1900s.
Synthesizing visual and literary analysis with urban cultural
history, Picturing the City focuses new attention on the materiality
and design process of pictures. The author scrutinizes all manner
of visual activity, from the pandemonium of comics to the mise-en-scene
of early movies, from the mark of an individual pen stroke to
a glance on the street, from illustrators' manuals to ambitious
paintings that became icons of American art. By situating the
Ashcan School within its proper visual culture, Zurier opens
up the question of what the artists' "realism" meant
at a time when many other forms of representation, including
journalism and cinema, were competing to define "real life"
in New York City.
Between 1897 and 1917, six painters, none native to the city
they so provocatively and energetically portrayed, challenged
the standards for suitable artistic subject matter when they
took to the streets of New York and seized on images full of
motion and life. Their "prophet" was Walt Whitman,
and their achievements create a vibrant record of urban growth
and artistic evolution. George Bellows, William Glackens, Robert
Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan were friends
and collaborators, each developing their own distinct style,
each capturing different slices of New York life. There are
scenes of poverty and wealth, work and play, sensuality and
despair. Zurier and her coauthors, Robert Snyder and Virginia
Mecklenburg, bring expertise in art, social, and cultural history
to this lively volume. They profile each artist and analyze
his works, establishing a visual context with photographs and
graphic arts of the time. Most of the paintings, which are beautifully
reproduced, are rarely seen in books, and some, especially Shinn's
exceptional pastels and watercolors, are a revelation.
"The letters are a delight absorbing, colorfully written, clever,
sometimes profound, full of valuable information and insights.
The book will be useful for the scholar and a pleasure for the
literate generalist." David W. Scott, Author of John Sloan.
In the saga of American art's coming-of-age, Robert Henri (1865-1929)
and John Sloan (1871-1951) stand tall among those in the vanguard
of the campaign. These two major American artists were kindred
spirits who maintained a special friendship throughout their
lives, from the moment they met in 1892 until Henri's death
thirty-seven years later.
Painters of a New Century celebrates the painters of
the groundbreaking 1908 exhibition known as "the Eight"—Arthur
Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George
Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shin, and John Sloan. According
to Milroy, they "transformed the art exhibition into political
statement and media event and shifted forever the relationship
between the American artist and the American public."
Within his treatise on art and its many facets, well-known artist
and teacher Robert Henri shares insight on the making and viewing
of art. He offers insight on areas which all artists must eventually
come to terms with, including proportion, technique, color,
style, and subject matter. He discloses a lifetime of his personal
"life-lessons" about his own art and his personal struggles
as an artist, and he shares honestly the perils and triumphs
of both he and his students. In a mere moment the reader learns
lessons about art and its making which take artists years to
learn. This book is a joy in every sense of the word—from
Henri's suggestions on rendering light reflecting from a woman's
lower lip to his secrets to making a portrait "glow". Henri's
The Art Spirit is a must-read for any reader interested in any
aspect of art. —A classic.
Publishers Weekly: Painter Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)
emerges as an odious and, probably, deeply disturbed man in
the detailed account of his life by researcher and writer Perlman
(Robert Henri: His Life and Art). Davies (like Henri) exhibited
with the group of painters known as The Eight, and as president
of the Association of America Painters and Sculptors, he introduced
European modern art to the American public by organizing the
1913 Armory Show. But Davies built his career by gaining the
affection of women whom he neglected badly once they bore his
children. He found the refuge he sought—a place where he
had neither financial nor emotional responsibilities—in
art. But, as this fascinating biography attests, his freedoms
cost others dearly. 101 illustrations (16 in color).
William Glackens by William H. Gerdts, Jorge H. Santis,
William J. Glackens – 1st Edition, Hardcover, 279 pages,
Published by Abbeville Press, 1996
Chapters: 1. Early Life and Travels 2. The Illustrator 3. New
York Scenes 4. A Brief Honeymoon Abroad 5. From the Eight to
Renoir 6. In the Park and at the Beach 7. The Late Work
Maurice
Prendergast by Nancy Mowell Matthews, Nancy Mowell Mathews
– Hardcover, 196 pages (August 1997) International Book
Import Service, Inc.
This monograph reflects the many aspects of the artist's genius,
from his early Impressionist street and beach scenes to his
middle phase of pointillist still lifes and his later colorful,
more flattened figurative paintings
Midwest Book Review: Maurice Prendergast's joyous , light-filled
canvases have made him one of America's best-loved painters.
His unique perception endowed his sensuous experiments in pattern
and texture, in atmosphere and light with a stature achieved
by few artists. Working in the last decade of the 19th century
and the first decades of the 20th, he perfected his distinctive
style, becoming one of the great colorists of all time. This
first comprehensive monograph on Prendergast contributes a wealth
of new scholarship. Based on letters, sketchbooks, and contemporary
articles and reviews, it also brings to life an exciting and
pivotal era, for Prendergast was in the forefront of modern
painting in America. His experiences while living and working
in Europe allowed him to draw on a wide variety of sources—including
the works of Cezanne, Signac, the Italian Renaissance painters,
and Watteau. Out of these he created his own truly unique idiom.
127 illustrations, including 52 in full color, and a bibliography
grace this splendid volume.
The Unknown Pastels by Maurice Brazil Prendergast Paperback
(December 1987) Universe Pub
highly regarded member of the "Ashcan School" of American
painting, John Sloan was also a remarkable teacher, as evidenced
by this illustrated, practical record of his talks and instructional
advice. Sloan discusses line, tone, texture, light and shade,
composition, design, space, perspective, and related issues.
Later chapters deal with figure drawing, painting, landscape
and mural painting, painting technique, etching and other media.
Each chapter features a wealth of helpful suggestions and exercises,
plus numerous illustrations.
John Sloan: Painter and Rebel by John Loughery –
Paperback, 464 pages Reprint edition (December 1997) Henry Holt
(Paper)
Documenting New York City's cultural coming-of-age, a historical
biography of an American painter and propagandist reveals the
social and political scene of the early 1900s, including Sloan's
activist wife Dolly, John Butler Yeats and his sons, and Max
Eastman.
Best remembered for his sporting scenes, American realist painter
George Bellows had an enormous range of subject interests, as
revealed by this splendid catalogue of a touring exhibition.
Bellows's late, joyful landscapes, done shortly before his death
from appendicitis in 1925, are delirious explosions of color.
His purest seascapes crystallize nature's elemental power, recalling
one of his principal influences, Winslow Homer. Frequently portraying
a mix of ethnic and social classes in the modern metropolis,
Bellows contributed to the socialist magazine The Masses and
occasionally assumed the role of social critic, as in Cliff
Dwellers , a chaotic street scene crowded with immigrants. In
incisive essays complemented by 210 plates (75 in color) five
noted scholars of American art examine the evolution of Bellows's
exuberant realism, his experimental response to the New York
scene, his simultaneous attraction to and fear of the sea and
his portraiture as a repository for intangible values.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Bellows's (1882-1925) paintings of New York in the early decades
of the 20th century captured the city's bigness and boldness
without sentimentality or sanitation. In this highly illustrated
volume (including 18 color plates), Doezema explores why it
was that Bellows's paintings—despite being considered coarse
in technique and subject matter—were acclaimed by critics
and patrons, by conservatives, progressives, and radicals alike.
Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Bellows was never officially a member of the Ashcan School,
however, because he did not participate in their initial 1908
exhibition at McBeth gallery. Biographers speculate this may
have been because Bellows was a decade younger than most of
the other artists in this group. Nonetheless, Bellows soon began
showing his works in major exhibitions and in 1909 at the age
of 27 became one of the youngest artists to be elected to the
National Academy of Design.
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Life's
Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush With Leisure, 1895-1925
Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York
Revolutionaries of Realism: The Letters of John Sloan and
Robert Henri
Painters of the Ashcan School: The Immortal Eight
Painters of a New Century: The Eight & American Art
Robert Henri: His Life and Art 
The Art Spirit: Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and
Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture
Making, the Study of Art
My
People: The Portraits of Robert Henri
The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies 
William Glackens
William Glackens and the Eight: The Artists Who Freed American
Art
Maurice
Prendergast
Maurice
Prendergast (Library of American Art) 
John Sloan: Painter and Rebel
by Michael Quick Paperback: 261 pages Publisher: Amon Carter
Museum (June 1992)
George Bellows and Urban America
GEORGE
BELLOWS: Painter of America
by Charles H. MORGAN Hardcover Publisher: Reynal (1965)
Ernest Lawson, American impressionist 1873-1939
A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas
