The “Ash-Can” School: The Magazine as Matrix

The "Ash-Can" School: The Magazine as Matrix JOSEPH J. KWIAT It is well established that newspaper work served as an invaluable apprenticeship for the American realist painters who, in the period before the First World War, came to be known as the ''Ash-Can" School, the "Revolutionary Black Gang," and "Apostles of Ugliness." Robert Henri was the exception; all the others, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, William J.Glackens, and George Luks, worked as newspaper artists in Philadelphia and New York during their formative years.1 Soon, however, they "graduated" to magazine work in New York where, under the guidance and encouragement of Robert Henri (first in Philadelphia and then in New York), they eventually emerged as serious and, as we have noted, even notorious painters. (See illustrations 4-7 accompanying this article.) Thomas Beer has pointed out that the "mild revolt" of the nineties against the so-called genteel tradition in American life found an early outlet in magazine illustrations: Thewhole history of the decade's mild revolt against the quality of American life is bound for display in the slick paper of the Century, Harper's, Scribner's, McClure's, and the Cosmopolitan . ... Revolt showed first in the illustrations which swung out of the mane traditional woodcuts and dreary imitations of Madise into the stony veracities of Howard Pyleand the smooth skill of Joseph Pennell and of Radford Brennan .... People suddenly lookedlike people, it was said, and if the general taste hung to the domestic pleasantness of CharlesGibson and Howard Christie, there were other hands at work .... Here were Low, Linson, Sonntag, Castaigne, and the earlier Maxfield Parrish. Peter Newell and A. B. Frost made farces of the respectable commoner's clothes, and his face took on a satiric emptiness under their touch. Here, little noticed, were the photographic exactitudes of Ernest Peixotto and Jay Hambidge. 2 Although line engraving had been widely used in America from the 1820's to about the Civil War in such publications as Godey'sLady's Book and the numerous gift annuals, the process of wood-engraving and the introduction of the power-press brought about significant changes. Above all, the greater verisimilitude of these new illustrations increased the popularity of many distinguished magazines: first Appleton's Journal, then Harper's Weekly and Harper's Monthly, and most notably Scribner'sMonthly and Century.3 These periodicals encouraged talented artists to contribute to their pages. Harper's Weekly, for example, published some of Winslow Homer's first drawings in 1857, then THE CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES VOL. VII, NO. 2, FALL 1976 5. WILLIAM GLACKENS. Everett Shinn (c. 1903). Red chalk. 4. JOIIN SI.OAN. William C/11ch11s( 1895). Oil on c,rnvas . 6. WILLIAM GLACKENS. Patriots in the Making. Pencil, ink, and water color drawing for Collier'sMagazine cover, July 4, 1907. 7. John Sloan in his New York studio, c. 1910. 166 commissioned him as an artist-correspondent with the Northern Army, and used his services intermittently until 1875. Some of the outstanding illustrators during this period were Thomas Nast, who later gained greater prominence as a political caricaturist, F. 0. C. Darley, Edwin A. Abbey, Howard Pyle, A. B. Frost, Frederick Remington, C. S. Reinhart, Joseph Pennell, and Timothy Cole, the celebrated engraver. The development of photo-engraving in the nineties marked the end of the expensive woodcut techniques and the domination of the magazine field by the older illustrated magazines. It heralded the significant entrance of the inexpensive ten-and-fifteen-cent periodicals. One of Stephen Crane's sketches describes the problem of the serious painter at that time who, in attempting to earn his living by his talents, is either driven to compromise with the low standards of someof the cheap illustrated magazines or to seek other means oflivelihood. 4 But the outlook for the magazine illustrator was not entirely dispiriting. Henry James, for example, wrote of the "art of illustration in black and white, to which American periodical literature has lately given such an impetus, and which has returned the good office by conferring a great distinction on our magazines." 5 With the improvement of various technical processes, and the possibility of the use of full...