Lot Essay
New York, at the turn of the century, was poignantly recorded by a group of pioneering artists commonly referred to as the Ashcan School. The Ashcan School, composed of Robert Henri, William Glackens, George Bellows, George Luks and Everett Shinn, portrayed the streets of New York with a fresh and uncompromising manner that was unparalleled at the time. Contrary to prevalent aesthetic theories that touted style and execution, the Ashcan School believed that subject and meaning represented the elements most important to a work; these artists responded reverently to the gritty realities of urban living. Similar to his colleagues, Everett Shinn throughout his career investigated the everyday dramas of the urban existence. Of the Ashcan School, Shinn is best known as a pastelist, a position of prominence he achieved early in his career. Through his deft handling of pastel, Shinn translated powerful images of the city that had never been fully explored in pastel. Horsedrawn Bus, executed in 1899, represents a body of work Shinn produced during his first decade in New York. These early works capture with a unique sense of directness, the vitality and emotional intensity of the environs of the city and its people at the turn of the century.
Shinn enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the fall of 1893 where he studied under Thomas Anshutz. He also secured a position with the Philadelphia Press as an artist-reporter, creating on-the-spot sketches of newsworthy events, an experience that would have tremendous influence on his art. According to Shinn, the Philadelphia Press was "a school that trained memory and quick perception" and "rigid requirements compelled [the artist] to observe, select and get the job done." (Shinn Autobiographical Material on deposit at the Delaware Art Museum, in E. DeShazo, Everett Shinn: A Figure of His Time, New York, 1974, p. 24). In Philadelphia Shinn also came to know William Glackens, George Luks and John Sloan while attending gatherings at Robert Henri's studio.
In 1897, Shinn moved to New York, where he would remain for most of his life, and continued his career as an artist and artist-reporter. He procured a position at New York World, a job that was set up by Luks and Glackens. Shinn quickly graduated from newspaper work and began illustrating for popular magazines such as Harpers, Scribner's and The Century. Unlike the reserved city of Philadelphia, New York had a vibrancy and phrenetic atmosphere with which Shinn immediately became entranced. His magazine illustrations, capturing daily events in and around the city, whether mundane or newsworthy, became visual testaments to this infatuation.
Shinn rapidly gained prominence as a magazine illustrator benefiting from a keen understanding of the printing process and recent advancements to the craft. This knowledge in turn enabled him to produce images for magazines that had excellent reproducing qualities. Modern advancements allowed artists to break free of conventional illustration media of pen, ink and watercolor, and work with alternatives, such as pastels, that afforded greater flexibility with gradations of tone and color. Shinn, along with other artists such as William Glackens, immediately recognized the inherent malleable qualities of the pastel medium.
Working with pastel, Shinn developed an innovative technique that rendered the medium more dense and painterly, contrary to its conventionally delicate and fragile nature. With a preconceived color composition, Shinn would apply quickly areas of color to a large dampened sheet of paper. As the pigments dried, the delicate, soft quality of the pastel transformed into a hard, opaque medium of intense color. Shinn's masterful handling of pastel prompted one critic to exclaim: "Pastel is one of the most charming of all vehicles. The possibilites of gradation of tone when it is employed [are] perhaps greater than any other medium," (quoted in D. Bolger, et. al, American Pastels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989, p. 18).
Shinn's recognition as an illustrator was paralleled by his success as an emerging artist. In 1899, Shinn had a one-man show devoted to his pastels at the well known New York gallery Boussod, Valadon & Co. and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A year later he held another larger, one-man exhibition at Boussod, Valadon & Co.
Shinn's early one-man exhibitions of pastels were comprised mainly of everyday scenes of New York and newsworthy events; images not unlike those he produced for magazines. Drawing inspiration from his immediate environment, Shinn brought to the public the opportunity to experience new and different views of New York. His works were met with encouraging reviews as one critic exclaimed "Mr. Shinn has done for New York what Rafaelli has done for Paris and M. Fleury for Chicago." (quoted in American Pastels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 18). Another reviewer observed that his show "sparkles like a ruby on the floor." (Town Topics, March 1, 1990) The impact of Shinn's celebrated early views of New York were distilled into an ingenious balance of medium, composition, style, and subject matter. Horsedrawn Bus, a dramatic image portraying city residents battling a raging snowstorm, illustrates fully these important elements.
Shinn's subjects for his pastels were chosen for their inherent drama and pictorial interest, a fascination partially born from his days as an artist-reporter. Diverse and often sensational scenes of New York such as tenement houses, bustling streets or burning buildings found direct expression in Shinn's pastels. Violent storms and their adverse effects on the city also intrigued Shinn. Horsedrawn Bus closely follows this artistic pattern in portraying the trial of the winter of 1899 when New York City was ravaged by a treacherous storm.
On February 7, 1899 New York was hit with a sudden and severe storm that paralyzed the city and was among the most destructive weather events in the city's history. The horrendous storm lasted almost a week and made the front page of The New York Times daily. The storm's ferocity, compounded by raging winds blowing up to sixty miles an hour combined with freezing rain, was debilitating to the city and its populace. After the first day of the storm, The New York Times reported: "The residents of New York and its environs struggled in the grasp of a small-sized blizzard yesterday. The streets were again blocked with banks of drifted snow. The surface cars crawled along at a snail's pace, with frequent delays. Truck horses slipped and fell or were stalled in freezing slush ...A high northwest wind lifted and carried along the murky atmosphere particles of solidly frozen snow that cut and stung like so many needles ...Frozen slush and snow had gathered ankle deep on all the down-town streets ...cable passengers ...were obliged to leave the cars many blocks from their destination and tramp through the slush...The streets were being broken through liked country roads and drivers were compelled to stop every block or two even in the busiest portions of the city to dig out the snow from between the spokes of the wheels that became ponderous white spheres after going through many drifts ..." (The New York Times, February 8, 1899, p. 1)
The vivid accounts of the 1899 blizzard recorded in The New York Times are further echoed in Shinn's Horsedrawn Bus. Shinn depicts a scene fraught with struggle against a terrible storm: while a team of horses and a driver recoil from the forceful wind and driving sleet, the horsedrawn bus with its wheels laden with snow comes to a halt, allowing passengers to disembark hesitantly. With little protection from their opened umbrellas, they forge ahead with great effort to their final destinations. The road, whose demarcations have completely vanished, is transformed into a barren wasteland of murky drifts of snow.
The visual impact of Horsedrawn Bus is intensified by Shinn's masterful handling of pastel and restrained selection of color comprised of white, black, blue and yellow. Using varying tones of black and white, Shinn creates an atmosphere thick with snow and sleet mixed with city soot. Emerging from the storm's confusion, he brilliantly highlights the bus and two apartment windows with dashes of intense blue and yellow as if they were beacons representing safety and comfort. With quick and forceful strokes of pastel, the grey-white snow is made dense and impenetrable. In direct contrast to the snow's jagged and broken application are the fluid lines delineating the bus, passengers, and architecture. The clash of these differing strokes instantly charge the image with tension, strife, and frustration, emotions indicative to coping with the elements.
These powerful emotions are further enhanced by Shinn's daring composition. By devoting more than half of the composition to snarling snowdrifts and relegating the very top portion of the work to passengers, the bus and architecture, he emphasizes the overwhelming difficulties that accompany blizzards. The great expanse of grey-white snow not only represents a lengthy trudge to the other side of the avenue for the passengers, but for the viewer magnifies the futility of travelling in such inclement weather.
The foul winter of 1899 found expression in many other pastels Shinn executed that same year. He produced a number of illustrations portraying the snow's wrath in 1899 which were reproduced for noted magazines such as Scribner's, The Century, and Harper's Magazine. Similarly Shinn, in his one-man pastel exhibitions in 1899 and 1900 included a number of city scenes besieged by snow, such as Fifth Avenue (snowstorm) and Housetops (snow storm).
After 1900 Shinn's work focused more intently on images of the theater rather than the street life of New York. Horsedrawn Bus and other works from Shinn's beginning years in New York remain some of the artist's most important and celebrated images. As one contemporary critic observed, the success of Shinn's works devoted to New York life encapsulate "the real actualism of the street, of its scurry and bustle, of its rush and hustle...that tide of its life which makes those who both know and love the city feel that is a sentient thing." (quoted in R. Zurier et al., Metropolitan Lives, The Ashcan Artists and their New York, New York, 1995, p. 73)
Shinn enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the fall of 1893 where he studied under Thomas Anshutz. He also secured a position with the Philadelphia Press as an artist-reporter, creating on-the-spot sketches of newsworthy events, an experience that would have tremendous influence on his art. According to Shinn, the Philadelphia Press was "a school that trained memory and quick perception" and "rigid requirements compelled [the artist] to observe, select and get the job done." (Shinn Autobiographical Material on deposit at the Delaware Art Museum, in E. DeShazo, Everett Shinn: A Figure of His Time, New York, 1974, p. 24). In Philadelphia Shinn also came to know William Glackens, George Luks and John Sloan while attending gatherings at Robert Henri's studio.
In 1897, Shinn moved to New York, where he would remain for most of his life, and continued his career as an artist and artist-reporter. He procured a position at New York World, a job that was set up by Luks and Glackens. Shinn quickly graduated from newspaper work and began illustrating for popular magazines such as Harpers, Scribner's and The Century. Unlike the reserved city of Philadelphia, New York had a vibrancy and phrenetic atmosphere with which Shinn immediately became entranced. His magazine illustrations, capturing daily events in and around the city, whether mundane or newsworthy, became visual testaments to this infatuation.
Shinn rapidly gained prominence as a magazine illustrator benefiting from a keen understanding of the printing process and recent advancements to the craft. This knowledge in turn enabled him to produce images for magazines that had excellent reproducing qualities. Modern advancements allowed artists to break free of conventional illustration media of pen, ink and watercolor, and work with alternatives, such as pastels, that afforded greater flexibility with gradations of tone and color. Shinn, along with other artists such as William Glackens, immediately recognized the inherent malleable qualities of the pastel medium.
Working with pastel, Shinn developed an innovative technique that rendered the medium more dense and painterly, contrary to its conventionally delicate and fragile nature. With a preconceived color composition, Shinn would apply quickly areas of color to a large dampened sheet of paper. As the pigments dried, the delicate, soft quality of the pastel transformed into a hard, opaque medium of intense color. Shinn's masterful handling of pastel prompted one critic to exclaim: "Pastel is one of the most charming of all vehicles. The possibilites of gradation of tone when it is employed [are] perhaps greater than any other medium," (quoted in D. Bolger, et. al, American Pastels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989, p. 18).
Shinn's recognition as an illustrator was paralleled by his success as an emerging artist. In 1899, Shinn had a one-man show devoted to his pastels at the well known New York gallery Boussod, Valadon & Co. and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A year later he held another larger, one-man exhibition at Boussod, Valadon & Co.
Shinn's early one-man exhibitions of pastels were comprised mainly of everyday scenes of New York and newsworthy events; images not unlike those he produced for magazines. Drawing inspiration from his immediate environment, Shinn brought to the public the opportunity to experience new and different views of New York. His works were met with encouraging reviews as one critic exclaimed "Mr. Shinn has done for New York what Rafaelli has done for Paris and M. Fleury for Chicago." (quoted in American Pastels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 18). Another reviewer observed that his show "sparkles like a ruby on the floor." (Town Topics, March 1, 1990) The impact of Shinn's celebrated early views of New York were distilled into an ingenious balance of medium, composition, style, and subject matter. Horsedrawn Bus, a dramatic image portraying city residents battling a raging snowstorm, illustrates fully these important elements.
Shinn's subjects for his pastels were chosen for their inherent drama and pictorial interest, a fascination partially born from his days as an artist-reporter. Diverse and often sensational scenes of New York such as tenement houses, bustling streets or burning buildings found direct expression in Shinn's pastels. Violent storms and their adverse effects on the city also intrigued Shinn. Horsedrawn Bus closely follows this artistic pattern in portraying the trial of the winter of 1899 when New York City was ravaged by a treacherous storm.
On February 7, 1899 New York was hit with a sudden and severe storm that paralyzed the city and was among the most destructive weather events in the city's history. The horrendous storm lasted almost a week and made the front page of The New York Times daily. The storm's ferocity, compounded by raging winds blowing up to sixty miles an hour combined with freezing rain, was debilitating to the city and its populace. After the first day of the storm, The New York Times reported: "The residents of New York and its environs struggled in the grasp of a small-sized blizzard yesterday. The streets were again blocked with banks of drifted snow. The surface cars crawled along at a snail's pace, with frequent delays. Truck horses slipped and fell or were stalled in freezing slush ...A high northwest wind lifted and carried along the murky atmosphere particles of solidly frozen snow that cut and stung like so many needles ...Frozen slush and snow had gathered ankle deep on all the down-town streets ...cable passengers ...were obliged to leave the cars many blocks from their destination and tramp through the slush...The streets were being broken through liked country roads and drivers were compelled to stop every block or two even in the busiest portions of the city to dig out the snow from between the spokes of the wheels that became ponderous white spheres after going through many drifts ..." (The New York Times, February 8, 1899, p. 1)
The vivid accounts of the 1899 blizzard recorded in The New York Times are further echoed in Shinn's Horsedrawn Bus. Shinn depicts a scene fraught with struggle against a terrible storm: while a team of horses and a driver recoil from the forceful wind and driving sleet, the horsedrawn bus with its wheels laden with snow comes to a halt, allowing passengers to disembark hesitantly. With little protection from their opened umbrellas, they forge ahead with great effort to their final destinations. The road, whose demarcations have completely vanished, is transformed into a barren wasteland of murky drifts of snow.
The visual impact of Horsedrawn Bus is intensified by Shinn's masterful handling of pastel and restrained selection of color comprised of white, black, blue and yellow. Using varying tones of black and white, Shinn creates an atmosphere thick with snow and sleet mixed with city soot. Emerging from the storm's confusion, he brilliantly highlights the bus and two apartment windows with dashes of intense blue and yellow as if they were beacons representing safety and comfort. With quick and forceful strokes of pastel, the grey-white snow is made dense and impenetrable. In direct contrast to the snow's jagged and broken application are the fluid lines delineating the bus, passengers, and architecture. The clash of these differing strokes instantly charge the image with tension, strife, and frustration, emotions indicative to coping with the elements.
These powerful emotions are further enhanced by Shinn's daring composition. By devoting more than half of the composition to snarling snowdrifts and relegating the very top portion of the work to passengers, the bus and architecture, he emphasizes the overwhelming difficulties that accompany blizzards. The great expanse of grey-white snow not only represents a lengthy trudge to the other side of the avenue for the passengers, but for the viewer magnifies the futility of travelling in such inclement weather.
The foul winter of 1899 found expression in many other pastels Shinn executed that same year. He produced a number of illustrations portraying the snow's wrath in 1899 which were reproduced for noted magazines such as Scribner's, The Century, and Harper's Magazine. Similarly Shinn, in his one-man pastel exhibitions in 1899 and 1900 included a number of city scenes besieged by snow, such as Fifth Avenue (snowstorm) and Housetops (snow storm).
After 1900 Shinn's work focused more intently on images of the theater rather than the street life of New York. Horsedrawn Bus and other works from Shinn's beginning years in New York remain some of the artist's most important and celebrated images. As one contemporary critic observed, the success of Shinn's works devoted to New York life encapsulate "the real actualism of the street, of its scurry and bustle, of its rush and hustle...that tide of its life which makes those who both know and love the city feel that is a sentient thing." (quoted in R. Zurier et al., Metropolitan Lives, The Ashcan Artists and their New York, New York, 1995, p. 73)