William James Glackens
William James Glackens
1870 - 1938
American painter and illustrator. He graduated in 1889 from Central High School, Philadelphia, where he had known Albert C. Barnes, who later became a noted collector of modern art. He became a reporter–illustrator for the Philadelphia Record in 1891 and later for the Philadelphia Press. In 1892 he began to attend evening classes in drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Thomas Anshutz. In the same year he became a friend and follower of Robert Henri, who persuaded him to take up oil painting in 1894. Henri’s other students, some of whom were referred to as the Ashcan school, included George Luks, Everett Shinn and John Sloan, also artist–reporters; together with Henri they formed the nucleus of THE EIGHT (II).
Glackens and Henri shared a studio in Philadelphia in 1894 and travelled together in Europe in 1895. On returning to the USA in 1896, Glackens followed Henri’s lead in moving to New York and supported himself by producing illustrations for the New York World and the New York Herald, as well as through book illustrations. In 1898 he and Luks went to Cuba to report on the Spanish–American War for McClure’s Magazine. On his return to New York, Glackens began to concentrate increasingly on painting. For subject-matter he turned to city parks and café scenes (see fig.). Like Henri, he admired Diego Velázquez and James McNeill Whistler and adopted the broad brushstrokes of Frans Hals and Edouard Manet. He was particularly drawn to the theatrical aspects of urban life, as in Hammerstein’s Roof Garden (1902; New York, Whitney).
By 1905 Glackens had adopted a style of high-keyed Impressionism, seen in Chez Mouquin (1905; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.). This painting, inspired by A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet, shows James B. Moore, owner of the Café Francis where the Ashcan painters often met. With him is one of his ‘daughters’, as he called his numerous young female companions, at Mouquin’s, a French restaurant under the Sixth Avenue elevated railway in New York. In the mirror behind the couple can be seen Glackens’s wife, Edith, and his future brother-in-law, Charles Fitzgerald, a critic for The Sun. The painting is one of several attempts on the part of the Ashcan painters to depict themselves in bohemian American settings (compare, for example, John Sloan’s Yeats at Petitpas’, 1910; Washington, DC, Corcoran Gal. A.).
Glackens became increasingly interested in Auguste Renoir’s use of colour, seen for the first time in Nude with Apple (1910; New York, Brooklyn Mus.), and soon discarded urban themes in favour of studio models, still-lifes, landscapes and seaside subjects, for example Bathers at Bellport (1912; Washington, DC, Phillips Col.). In 1910 Glackens was contacted by ALBERT C. BARNES. Glackens urged him to consider collecting Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings instead of those of the Barbizon school, as he had been doing. Barnes agreed and in 1912 sent Glackens to France with $20,000 to buy art for him as he saw fit. Glackens returned with works by Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Seurat and others, forming the nucleus of the Barnes Foundation Collection in Merion Station, PA.
In 1913 Glackens served as Chairman for selecting American art for the Armory Show, in which he also exhibited, and he was the first President of the Society of Independent Artists (1917). There was no notable development in Glackens’s art after this date, and he continued to paint until his health began to fail. One of his late works was Soda Fountain (1935; Philadelphia, PA Acad. F.A.). [M. Sue Kendall. "Glackens, William J.." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T032734.]
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