Election Banner – Twenty-third and Broadway
1903
Everett Shinn
born Woodlawn, New Jersey, 1876; died New York City, New York, 1953
Shinn exhibited with urban realist artists who were popularly disparaged for their gritty "ashcan" subjects. Yet Shinn's subjects were often elegant when his comrades' work was not. Shinn loved the theater and public spectacle. He relished making brilliant pastel paintings of the kaleidoscopic world of the stage and the street.
Shinn greatly advanced the art of pastel drawing—more commonly called "painting" in his day—which saw a surge of revival in America beginning in the 1880s, and in this respect his art seems closer to that of late nineteenth-century artists. Yet his subjects are thoroughly of his day, and often in Shinn's art, his elegant handling of the pastel medium can make us forget that he is addressing the dark side of urban life.
Pastel on paper
23 x 15 1/2 in. (58.4 x 39.4cm)
Partial and promised gift from a private collection
2005.165
Provenance: Estate of the artist, to [James Graham & Sons, New York]; sold to private collection, Philadelphia; sold to [James Graham and Sons, Inc., New York]; sold to donor
Photo: Susan Cole