Everett Shinn

Everett Shinn is one of America’s most renown illustrators who became a member of The Eight (1908) and known for his Ash Can paintings.  Alley Cats, New York City is a typical social-commentary Ash Can painting, showing wild cats romping in a filthy inner city alley.

From Woodstown, New Jersey, Shinn worked as a designer for a gas-fixture company in Philadelphia from 1890-1893 after studying industrial design. Then he took courses at the PAFA in Philadelphia (1893-1897)and worked as a reporter-artist for the Philadelphia Press and met the future members of “the Eight.”

Altogether, Shinn illustrated 28 and 94 magazine stories, while painting in Philadelphia and then New York City (where he moved in 1897). He also painted murals during this period, one of which was a series of 18 murals for the Stuyvesant Theater and for the City Hall in Trenton, NJ.

His paintings became successful because they depicted slums and middle-class café society, sluts strutting down streets and theatre activities. His theatre scenes are usually in oil and his street scenes in pastel. Unlike John Sloan who felt a genuine reformer’s commitment to lower-class urban themes, Shinn viewed the entire city as a glittering spectacle to savor and enjoy until the end of his life. His art reflects the influences of Honore Daumier, Edgar Degas and Jean-Louis Fortain.

Shinn is represented in almost every high-end museum in the U.S. including the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Art Institute of Chicago, Terra Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, National Academy of Design and many more.

Reference:  Edith De Shazo, Everett Shinn, 1974; Who Was Who in American Art, vol. Iii; Baignell, Dictionary of American Art