Everett Shinn captured the poverty of slums to the privilege of the gilded upper crust in a rapidly modernizing world.
He started his professional life in the early 1890s as an illustrator-reporter on gritty stories for newspapers in Philadelphia. He soon applied his skills for depicting dramatic events with speed and accuracy to his paintings. By the late 1890s, he moved to New York City where he associated with the Ashcan painters which focused primarily on urban street scenes.
In the early 1900s, Shinn widened his focus to include the energy and glamour of theater and eventually film where all socioeconomic layers often mingled.
Following are a few Dynamic Brushstrokes from the work of Everett Shinn.
#1 He Caught Newsworthy Moments With Precision
Everett Shinn ((1876 –1953) started his career as an illustrator-reporter for publications including the Philadelphia Press newspaper. Philadelphia newspapers in the early 1890s. He became known as a realist illustrator capable of depicting the people, buildings, transportation and constant motion of an emerging modern urban environment.
While working in Philadelphia, Shinn took classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1893 to 1897. He met other newspaper illustrators who shared his passion for observing the rapidly changing times. Among them were George Luks, John Sloan and William Glackens.
Instructor Robert Henri inspired them with his belief that common events and people could be subjects of a painting.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries Writes:
“Journalistic illustration was the perfect training ground for the socially engaged art that Robert Henri expounded. The artist-journalists, on the street with their sketch pads, would make quick notations from life, and then head back to the newspaper offices to work these up quickly as illustrations for news stories.“ (Hirschl & Adler)
#2 New York City Presented Opportunities For Reporters
In 1897, Shinn moved to New York City where the chasm between rich and poor was growing and glaringly evident at every turn.
It was a vibrant time when newspapers hired competitive stunt reporters like Nellie Bly to investigate stories about social injustices and political cartoonists including Art Young used illustrations as weapons to reach the masses.
Shin’s career as an illustrator flourished in NYC. Among his many clients were Harper’s Weekly, Vanity Fair and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper.
He joined some of his art school cohorts plus other like-minded artists. The group included Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens, George Bellows, Edward Hopper and Everett Shinn. They became known as “The Eight”.
#3 Ashcan Painters Rejected Traditional Subject Matter
It was a time when the gap between rich and poor became a chasm. The Eight challenged elite subject matter of traditional academic art with their focus on the underclass of working people in crowded urban environments. They frequently portrayed the expanding slums where millions of European immigrants lived.
Using fast, rough strokes and mostly dark colors, they captured the essence of life in the streets in the late 1890s and early 1900s.
The turning point for The Eight was the seminal 1908 show. Titled “Eight American Painters”, it was held in Manhattan at the Macbeth Gallery. Borrowing from an art critic, they later adopted the title Ashcan derived from their rebellious subject matter. Their work garnered national attention, both highly positive and brutally negative.
They became known as the Ashcan School.
#4 Ashcan School Mirrored French Impressionist’s Vision
In the 1860s, the French Impressionists shouldered fierce criticism and rejection for their choice of subject matter that included “common” people in their daily lives amidst a rapidly changing world.
The Paris Salon had been the official yearly showcase of French art for more than a century, with the conservative French Academy choosing its judges. Acceptance in the Salon could make an artist’s career, while rejection could ruin one.
As the traditional champion of orthodox style, the jury leaned almost exclusively toward conservative Academic Art. Techniques and colors were formal. Subject matter typically depicted biblical, mythological or historical stories on broad canvases.
Claude Monet was famously rejected, even as his painting Impression of a Sunrise (1872) inspired the name of the loosely banded group of radical painters.
Decades later Everett Shinn and the Ashcan School faced similar backlash to their style and choice of subjects.
#5 Ashcan School Portrayed Cities In Rapid Transition
Also like some of the Impressionists before them, Everett Shinn and his colleagues portrayed rapidly changing cities with advances in transportation, electricity, and high-rise structures.
Artists including Claude Monet celebrated France’s industrial progress and prosperity. also made many pictures of urban and suburban leisure—beach scenes, public and private gardens, tourist sites, and family activities—scenes that captured the lifestyle of the modern bourgeoisie
Evertt Shinn also depicted the growing consumerism in sketches and paintings of window shoppers, gazing into the newest form of enticement, compliments of the industrial age.
#6 A European Trip Shifted His Attention
Traveling to Europe in 1900 for the Universal Exposition, Everett Shinn embraced the excitement of British music halls and Parisian outdoor café concerts. His work took a dramatic shift after the trip, featuring elements from theater and vaudeville.
Apparently energized by the work of Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and other Impressionists, Shinn began to incorporate dynamic exchanges between spectators, performers and audience members. He also embraced dramatic, unconventional angles unique cropping of subjects, artificial light. He also placed the viewer in the audience or orchestra pit in many compositions.
Shinn edged away (or pushed) from the Ashcan School with his decidedly “un-Ashcan” subject matter. He stated:
“I was often accused of being a snob. Not at all. It’s just the uptown life with all its glitter was more good looking; the people made pictures. And the clothes then — the movement, the satins, women’s skirts and men’s coats, and the sweep of furs and swish of wild boas, oh Lord!”
Ever innovative and ready for a challenge, Everett Shinn became a set designer and art director for the fledgling motion picture industry. He designed for Samuel Goldwyn Pictures until 1920.
“Shinn was a debonair and attractive figure. He remained with Goldwyn Pictures until 1920, when he was enticed away to Inspiration Pictures.”
He transitioned to lucrative work for William Randolph Hearst’s film endeavors.
Shinn returned East to explore new opportunities.
.”Shinn found ready work decorating Long Island mansions with sumptuous rococo murals. It was, after all, the era of the Great Gatsby.”
Although the public’s gave way to modernism, Shinn continued developing his unique style of illustrative painting.
Racing Nellie Bly
Victorian Secrets From Footnotes In History
Know The Past To Invent The Future
