#ashcan school

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Edward Hopper, Skyline Near Washington Square, 1925. Watercolor and graphite on paper,

"Skyline Near Washington Square portrays an austere Manhattan rooftop behind which rises a single gaunt narrow building that dominates the sky. When first shown, this work bore the title Self-Portrait, an ironical and self-referential joke in the form of a visual pun on Hopper's own great height, which had long been an object of caricature and comment by himself and his friends. The original title, which also appears in the artist's record books, must have puzzled any viewer unfamiliar with Hopper's lanky figure. For this watercolor Hopper's wife Jo noted in the record books she kept of his work as it left the studio. 'Self-Portrait. Roof & top of higher house sticking up behind. Skyline near Wash. Sq.' By the time he sold the work in 1927 he had renamed it, concealing the self-reference with the purely descriptive title."

--Gail Levin

Photo: Whitney Museum of American Art

[eirene]

Lady in Black with Spanish Scarf (O in Black with a Scarf) Robert Henri

[lionofchaeronea]

Title: Edge of the Pasture -- Glow of the Sun Artist: George Bellows (American, 1882-1925) Date: 1916 Genre: landscape painting Movement: Ashcan School Medium: oil on panel Dimensions: 45.7 cm (17.9 in) high x 55.9 cm (22 in) wide Location: private collection

[oncanvas]

Revue, Everett Shinn, 1908

Oil on canvas 18 ⅛ x 24 ¼ in. (46 x 61.6 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY, USA

[fleurdulys]

Evening Blue (Tending the Lobster Traps, Early Morning) - George Wesley Bellows 

[kafkasapartment]

Picture Shop Window, 1907. John Sloan.

Oil on canvas.

[art-portraits]

My Friend Brien

Artist: Robert Henri (1865–1929

Genre: Portrait

Date: 1913

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States

Description

Robert Henri was a charismatic and independent-minded teacher and artist, but he is best known today as the leader of the so-called “Ashcan School” of urban realists. His anti-academic stance that art should be based on the artist’s direct engagement with everyday life on the streets ruffled more than a few critical feathers but served to unite the artists that gathered around him, who included George Bellows, George Luks, Everett Shinn and John Sloan. Henri devoted much of his career to painting portraits of people from all walks of life. Henri painted this engaging portrait of Brien O’Malley, his friend and guide, during his first visit to the town of Achill, Ireland, in 1913. With its bold brushwork and its unflinching depiction of O’Malley’s weather-beaten features, "My Friend Brien" is a clear testament to Henri’s belief that a painting should be as direct and frank a representation of its subject as possible. He wrote in 1915, just two years after completing this painting: “The people I like to paint are ‘my people,’ . . . people through whom the dignity of life is manifest . . . wherever I find them . . . my impulse immediately is to tell about them through my own language - drawing and painting in color.”

[lilacsinthedooryard]

Robert Henri ( United States1865-1929 )

West Coast of Ireland  1913

[japanhopper]

Speeding, through the metropolis, the opposite momentum of the slowly fading day, electric dawn, mechanical ambitions, machines dreaming

Video & poem copyright 2024 David 2e

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

June 10th is the birthday of American artist Fairfield Porter (1907-1975). Having studied Fine Art at Harvard and continuing on at the Art Students’ League in 1928, Porter made a name for himself as a skilled colorist and figurative painter employing warm color palettes and energetic brushwork. His subjects included the brimming Maine coastline, portraits of his children, family and friends, and common domestic still lifes. Porter’s perspective celebrates a subdued domesticity and magnifies the extraordinary moments of ordinary life by capturing idealized light coupled with abstract shapes and shadows.  

In commemoration of the day, we’re sharing Fairfield Porter by John Wilmerding (1938-2024) and Karen Wilken (b.1940). Published by Rizzoli in 2016, Fairfield Porter explores the life and work of Porter including one hundred and nine color plates, several candid photographs, two essays on the artist, and a poem by J.D. McClatchy (1945-2018). Wilmerding laments that Porter was overlooked in his lifetime resulting in incomplete accolades for his accomplishments and remedies this through the publication of Fairfield Porter. The book showcases Porter’s famous subdued yellow palette, prolific painting practice, and contributions to bridging the Ashcan School movement to modern figurative painting.  

Read other Milestone Monday posts here. 

– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[the-cricket-chirps]

John Sloan

McSorley's Bar

1912

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Daniel Ralph Celentano, "A Marro,” 1930s. Oil on board.

At the age of twelve, Daniel Celentano was Thomas Hart Benton's first and youngest student. Celentano often focused on the Italian neighborhood of New York where he was born and raised as the subject matter of his drawings, paintings, and murals.

Photo: 1st Dibs

[eirene]

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916 Robert Henri

[lionofchaeronea]

Bleecker Street, Saturday Night, John French Sloan, 1918

[oncanvas]

Backyards, Greenwich Village, John Sloan, 1914

Oil on canvas 26 x 31 15/16 in. (66 x 81.1 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY, USA

[art1for2the3masses]

William James Glackens - Luxembourg Gardens [1906]

William James Glackens (March 13, 1870 – May 22, 1938) was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School.