Caption: Ruth St. Denis in the Peacock Dance, 1919, by Robert Henri, of Philadelphia. Henri is considered the founder and leader of the eight-man group referred to as "The Eight" and the "Ash Can Group". All worked at the Philadelphia Press. The group's name derives from the urban garbage can image and hostile critics also named the group the "black gang."
Courtesy of
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of the Sameric Corporation in memory of Eric Shapiro
Caption: Girl with Fan, by Robert Henri. Henri studied at the Pennsylvania Academy from 1886 to 1888, and returned to the Academy to resume classes in 1891, where he met and influenced a group of newspaper illustrators who came to be known as "the Philadelphia Four": John Sloan, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and George Luks.
Courtesy of
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Joseph E. Temple Fund
Caption: Isolina Maldonado - Spanish Dancer, 1921, by Robert Henri (1865-1929).
Allentown Art Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Altobelli, 1996.
Caption: Strong Man, Clown, and Dancer, by Everett Shinn, the youngest and the last survivor of "The Eight"? of Philadelphia. Shinn was born into a Quaker family and attended Quaker schools until age fourteen. He then registered for classes in mechanical drawing at a technical school in Philadelphia, and at age sixteen began working as a draftsman in a light fixture factory. In 1893 he joined a Philadelphia newspaper as an illustrator.
Courtesy of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Collections Fund.
Caption: The Soda Fountain, by William Glackens, of Philadelphia. Considered the most skillful, quick sketch artist of the members of the "Ashcan School" William Glackens, a native Philadelphian, began working as a reporter-illustrator for several newspapers in the city in 1891, shortly after graduating from Central High School.
Courtesy of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Joseph E. Temple and Henry D. Gilpin Funds
Caption: Self Portrait, by John Sloan of Lock Haven, one of the five Pennsylvania members of the "Ashcan School". Sloan was a commercial artist and a newspaperman.
Courtesy of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Helen Farr Sloan
Caption: Jefferson Market, 1917, Retouched 1922, by John Sloan.
"In 1908, out of frustration at rejection by the academic, establishment art world, he and Robert Henri organized an exhibition of work by themselves and six other artists at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. Dubbed "the Eight," and the subject of much press notoriety, the art they showed was derided as being too earthy, and too real, as well as vulgar and lacking in conventional beauty. Even though they never exhibited together again, the Eight's exhibition became a landmark event in American art history and spawned a school of ingAmerican realism which came to be known as the "Ashcan school." PAFA
Courtesy of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Henry D. Gilpin Fund
Caption: Famous Artists in Their Studios, by George Luks of Williamsport. One of the five Pennsylvania members of the eight-man "Ashcan School".
Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Caption: Frank Crane, by George Luks.
Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Caption: Ultra marine, by Stuart Davis, 1943. Davis" father was art director of a Philadelphia newspaper, who had employed Luks, Glackens, and other members of "The Eight"? Although not a member of the Ashcan group, Davis studied with Robert Henri from 1910-1913. Davis made covers and drawings for the social realist periodical The Masses, which was associated with the Ash-can School.
Courtesy of the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Philadlephia,
Joseph E. Temple Fund
Caption: Bathers, St. Malo, ca. 1907-1909, by Maurice Brazil Prendergast, a member of "The Eight", which consisted of Glackens, Sloan, Henri, Prendergast, Lawson, Shinn, Luks, and Davies.
Courtesy of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg
Gift of Dr. Walter Read Hovey
Caption: Caricature of Everett Shinn, by George Luks. Originally from Williamsport, Luks was raised in the coal town of Shenandoah.
Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art