Metropolitan Lives

This book presents 100 of the greatest paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints by a group of artists derogatorily dubbed the Ashcan School by the critics. George Bellows, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan ignored the romantic and lofty themes of many of their contemporaries and chose instead to depict the dramatic changes and conflicting social mores among the common people in turn-of-the-century New York City. The Ashcan artists documented the city and its people in an almost journalistic fashion, exploring the same subjects occupying the press: immigration, the lower-middle class, and gender issues. They portrayed life at the street level, gravitating to bars, street corners, boxing clubs, beaches, parks, restaurants, movie theaters, and neighborhood meeting places. In retrospect, it is difficult to imagine the American tradition in painting without these wonderful and moving works.