Everett Shinn Biography | Oil Paintings

At age fifteen Everett Shinn studied mechanical drawing at the Spring Garden Institute in Philadelphia from 1888–1890, the following year he took art classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and by age seventeen he was working as a staff artist for the Philadelphia Press newspaper. It is here where he became friends with William Glackens, George Luks, and John French Sloan, whose style of urban realism depicting the bleaker aspects of city life influenced Shinn. He entered the field of newspaper illustration in its heyday, Shinn moved from paper to paper for the rest of his illustrating career, receiving a larger salary with each move.

In 1890, shortly after his first major one-person exhibition in New York, Shinn and his wife traveled to England and France. While in Paris, Everett Shinn was influenced by the theater scenes paintings of Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Jean-Louis Forain, and this changed works dramatically, he began to paint dance performers in action with unusual vantage points.

Shinn started displaying his paintings publicly to mixed reactions in 1899, the following year, he traveled to Europe again to study other painters and to prepare enough works for other exhibition. This trip influenced his art in years to come, as he was especially moved by Impressionism and European art that focused on the theater.

It was during Everett Shinn's time in Philadelphia that artists Robert Henri, John Sloan, and Joseph Laub established the Charcoal Club as an informal alternative art school. The Charcoal Club, who also included fellow illustrators and painters William Glackens and George Luks, reached a peak membership of thirty-eight and is thought of as the starting point for what later would become known as the Ashcan School of American art.

The Ashcan School also known as 'The Eight', was a group of eight artists that rebelled against traditional academic artistic standards and teaching methods. Their name was established in 1908 when they all exhibited together, but since they were diverse in their subject matter and painting styles, this led to their movement being short-lived although it had a big impact on the future Realist Movement in modern art.

Everett Shinn's best works capture a moment in time of American urban life in the early years of the twentieth century, in both a realist and a romantic spirit, and the greatest theater-inspired paintings in American art are The Hippodrome, London and The Orchestra Pit, Old Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theater.

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Art Movement: Ashcan School, Realism.
He Traveled To France, England.
Artists Influencing Everett Shinn: Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Robert Henri.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.