Anschutz Thomas Pollock
"The Farmer and His Son at Harvesting"
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist
artistic movement that came into prominence in the United
States during the early twentieth century, best known for
works portraying scenes of daily life in New
York's poorer neighborhoods.
The
movement grew out of a group known as The
Eight, whose only show together in 1908 created a sensation. Its members
included five painters later associated with the Ashcan School: WilliamGlackens (1870–1938), Robert Henri (1865–1929), George Luks (1867–1933), EverettShinn (1876–1953) and John French Sloan (1871–1951). They had met studying
together under Thomas Pollock Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts.
In their
paintings as in their illustrations, etchings, and lithographs, artists
concentrated on portraying New York's
vitality and recording its seamy side, keeping a keen eye on current events and
their era's social and political rhetoric. Stylistically, they depended upon
the dark palette and gestural brushwork of Diego Velázquez, Frans Hals, Francisco
de Goya, Honoré Daumier, and recent Realists such as Wilhelm Leibl, Édouard
Manet, and Edgar Degas. They preferred broad, calligraphic forms, which they
could render "on the run" or from memory, thereby enlisting skills
that most of them had cultivated as newspaper illustrators.
The Eight was a group comprised of the eight members of the Ashcan school. They originated in New York City in 1908, exhibiting together despite their different artistic approaches. The group was comprised of romanticist Arthur B. Dawes, impressionists Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, and William Glackens, illustrator Everett Shinn, virtuoso Robert Henri and his followers, John Sloan and George Luks. What united the men of The Eight was their opposition to strict academic exhibition procedures. They organized a revolutionary exhibition that rebelled against American modern art in that it was the first self-organized and self-selected exhibit by a group of related artists, without a jury and prizes. They also held the Armory Show in 1913, which exposed modern European art to the American public, who received it with a mix of shock and curiosity. In 1917, The Eight organized the Society of Independent Artists along with George Bellows and others.
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