The Ash Can School2

It was in New York that the first group of American artists to use the city as their subject came together. It is hard for us today, looking at the paintings of John Sloan, Maurice B. Prendergast, and other members of what has come to be known as the Ash Can School, to find anything revolutionary about them. In their days, though, these paintings represented a sharp break with the previous course of American art, and when the nucleus of the group — the “Eight Independent Painters” (usually shortened to the “Eight”) exhibited in New York’s Macbeth Gallery in 1908, a great deal of notoriety was attached to the event. For they were the first group of American painters to show men and women with no pretensions of glamor going about their daily activities.

The term Ash Can School (they were also dubbed the “revolutionary black gang”) was a negative one, and was aimed derisively at these painters who dealt only with the life of the alleys and backyards, or at least of the shabby people who were at home there.

The spokesman of the group, Robert Henri, urged the importance of the common man in the street. Among the many causes he exposed was that of the Russian revolutionaries. Henri argued that art, both in its subject matter and in the quick, slapdash handling of it ought to reflect “life”. John Sloan worked for many years as a newspaper illustrator, and because of this background many of his paintings have an anecdotal quality. Prendergast was attracted to crowds; he had come to appreciate the crowd as a spectacle. George Bellows, a pupil of Henri’s, was closely associated with the Ash Can group. He represented personally what the group advocated through art.

A. Find sentences with the following words and phrases in the texts and translate them into Ukrainian:

the vistas, to extend into, to nourish, to gain livelihood, to roam from village, to draw increasing appreciation, a typical scene, virgin landscape, foreground figures, to set against, to suggest to the viewer a draftsman, a map engraver, the realistic influence, dry paint, water-color, pastel, a portraitist, to be a huge success, etching, to use the city as the subject of art, to represent a sharp break from, the nucleus of the group, to attach a great deal of notoriety, to show smb. with no pretensions of glamour, to urge the importance of subject matter, handling, to reflect life, to have an anecdotal quality, to be closely associated with. a self-taught artist, pictorial correspondent, country life, farm scenes, unpretentious, down-to-earth subjects, to please the tastes of, to offend genteel taste, democratic attitude, to undergo a change, central theme, to ignore the life of the privileged classes of society, to devote one's art to the common people.

B. Looking at the article about famous artists in America, find the one who:

• is considered to be the first important artist in the history of American painting;

• worked as a newspaper illustrator and his paintings have an anecdotal quality;

• painted a series of Revolutionary War scenes for the capitol rotunda in Washington;

• was born in England but spent his youth in the United States both as a landscape painter and a portrait painter;

• presided over the Royal Society of British Artists; organized the newly fo­unded International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Engravers;

• was one of the greatest American painters but a self-taught;

• was very skillful in history painting.

C. Skim through the text about the Hudson RiverSchool and say what the typical Hudson RiverSchool scene is.

D. Imagine you are an owner of the art gallery, choose 5 pictures of the Ash can School’s artists and motivate your choice.