Everett Shinn
American, 1873-1953 (active France)

The Seine, Right Bank, 1905 ca.
oil on canvas
29 5/8 × 36 3/4 in.

SBMA, Bequest of Margaret Mallory
1998.50.60



Detail from the 1901 self-portrait in pastel on blue paper by Everett Shinn in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

RESEARCH PAPER

“The Seine, Right Bank” by Everett Shinn (1876-1953) is an oil on canvas signed in the lower right corner. It was painted in 1905 and was given to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1999 as part of the bequest from Margaret Mallory. Parisian buildings facing the Seine are depicted as well as an arched bridge and boats docked at the edge of the river. Human figures are not prominent in this turn of the century scene. The viewer’s eye is drawn along the diagonal line of images that begins in the lower right corner and continues along the river towards the middle of the left side of the painting. The details of the buildings are sufficient to distinguish each but not precisely outlined. Structures are placed side by side and their diminishing size as the street moves away from the viewer gives dramatic perspective. Paris is not idealized in this painting but rather is a working city that is depicted as tough and dark.

The colors used are a dark and muted palette. Although there is some use of blue in the sky the river is a turbulent green with flecks of white. Gray, black and brown dominate this painting and contribute to the dark overall appearance. Although this darkness could denote evening the whitecaps on the river depict a stormy daytime scene.

Among this stormy scene there is just a hint of human activity. These figures are barely discernible. Just as the Seine takes precedence in the title of this work, it also occupies more of this painting than the city and buildings. The river and activities on the river are foremost. The texture is thick and the depth of the paint is visible from all angles. This texture adds to the dark and stormy feeling of this Parisian scene.

The career of this artist is not entwined in Paris or Europe but rather in the history of New York and Philadelphia. Shinn grew up in Philadelphia and moved to New York in the 1890s. He came from a modest background. Shinn did not have the benefit of formal art training. He received his early training in public high school drafting courses. Along with other members of the group which later was known as the “Ashcan artists” he found work in Philadelphia as an illustrator. Only after finding work in this field did he take evening art classes at the Pennsylvania Academy.

Illustration was a very popular and growing art form in Philadelphia at this time. Mass reproduction was entering its heyday and vendors realized the sales value of pictorial representations of their products in the newspaper. Shinn remarked that working as a newspaper illustrator was better training of one’s perception skills than all the art school training available. Newspaper illustrators were sent on assignment and would return to the newspaper to reconstruct pictorially the story they had seen. Not only did the story illustrated have to be representative it also had to be done quickly and capture the interest of the newspaper buying public. This need for speed contributed to a style among illustrators that omitted extensive detail and sometimes meant the illustrator had to draw not from first hand observation but rather from second hand information of a late-breaking news event. “The Seine, Right Bank” does not show extensive detail.

While still taking classes Shinn and several of his fellow illustrators decided that their daily work experiences were better training than their classes at the Pennsylvania Academy. They hired the artist Robert Henri to be their teacher. Henri had studied in France and shared the artistic ideas he had gathered there with this group of young illustrators. Henri’s teachings emphasized working quickly to best capture personal feelings on canvas, much as newspaper illustrators had been required to do. He also advocated basing the subject of a painting on contemporary experiences, which would later play an important role in Ashcan art. Henri encouraged his students to move to New York where scenes of everyday experiences would really make their art come alive.

Shinn moved to New York in the 1890s and had a one man show in 1900. His preferred medium was pastel. Although before leaving Philadelphia he had a successful one-man showing at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, it was for the New York showing that he is most remembered. Henri was also in this show. This exhibit at the Macbeth Galleries in 1908 caused a great uproar among New York art critics. The eight exhibitors were Henri, Sloan, Luks, Glackens, Prendergast, Lawson, Davies and Shinn. These participants are known as “The Eight”, although they never exhibited together again and had very different styles. Their subject matter was their common ground. Henri encouraged this group to look at life around them and also to study 17th century realists such as Velazquez and Rembrandt. In accord with the philosophy of Henri these artists painted scenes of everyday life in all their grit and reality. Painting mythical figures and idyllic scenery was far from their style. This group rebelled against idealism and they were drawn to the masses not the upper classes. Their works exhibited a social conscience and was a conscious revolt against the impressionism that was popular in the United States at this time. They were called realists and critics said their works were not acceptable for mass consumption, which re-enforced the “Ashcan” label.

Shinn was particularly engaged by New York night life. He found it fascinating and held this feeling throughout his artistic life. Theater and music hall scenes are the subject of many of his works as is the smoky street life of New York at the turn of the century. Just as a river is the subject of this work, the gray East River of New York was often subject matter for Shinn. New York newspapers and publishing houses offered steady employment to the artists drawn to this thriving city.

Four members of the “Ashcan School” were newspaper artists: William Glackens (1870-193 8), George Luks (1866-1933), John Sloan (1871-1951) and Shinn. Although George Bellows (1882-1925) did not exhibit with these four at the Macbeth Gallery, he is linked to them through Henri (1865-1929). Henri, Sloan, Glackens and Davies were considered leaders in the battle for independent art. They welcomed the new modern movement beginning to reach the United States. Several years later they founded The Society of Independent Artists.

Shinn’s works from this period show shaggy lines of color and clear perspective, as in this painting of “The Seine, Right Bank”. His dealer (Boussod, Valadon) thought that Shinn should go to Europe to show his works and to gather material for future endeavors. This painting resulted from this one and only European trip, although many of the other works he produced from this visit reflected his enchantment with the theater world. A pastel of this same scene, dated 1905, is in the Huntington Library and Galleries (Pasadena, California) and suggests that Shinn recreated this pastel after returning from the same trip to Europe during which he created this oil painting. Pastel, not oil, was his preferred medium.

Shinn’s love of the theater and its glamour made him unique among his Ashcan colleagues. The works he completed after “The Seine, Right Bank” departed from its subject matter and continue to show his enthusiasm for the theater. Shinn worked with theater owners, architects and decorators such as David Belasco, Stanford White and Elsie de Wolfe. He also worked for Sam Goldwyn at Goldwyn Pictures, Inspiration Pictures, and Cosmopolitan Pictures, then owned by William Randolph Hearst. Shinn contributed to many national magazines and completed twenty book illustrations in ten years. He continued to be a prolific artist and contributor to the newspaper and movie industries until his death in 1953.

Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Fran Adams, April, 1999

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Illustration Collection, “Everett Shinn”, # 3, 1995.

National Museum of American Art, “Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York”. November 17, 1995- March 17, 1996.

Glackens, Ira. William Glackens and the Eight. New York: Horizon Press. 1957.

New Jersey State Museum, “Everett Shinn 1873-1953”, September 15 - November 25, 1973.

Encyclopedia of World Art, Volume 1. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. 1959.

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

A key member of “The Eight” and the Ashcan School, Shinn’s work helped promote both groups’ goals of depicting the realities of urban life. This moody Parisian scene showcases his attention to the inner workings of daily life in the city, focusing on the industrial boats and buildings at the river’s edge rather than the famous architectural highlights of the Seine. Shinn first traveled to Paris with his wife in 1901, a trip that would prove to be transformative in shifting his attention towards innovative theater and performance scenes, inspired by French artists such as Manet and Degas.

- Highlights of American Art, 2021