Day 300 - Ashcan School portrait
May 30, 2022
The title of the placard introducing Gallery 772 reads "The Ashcan School, The Eight, and Modern America" (the Eight, as I learn, were a group of artists who exhibited together at a New York gallery in 1908) -- which is to say that the works on view represent something of a grab bag of styles, although they tend to deal with urban America. These works include a Post-Impressionist painting of Central Park by Maurice Prendergast, a charming winter scene in the park by William Glackens, and an odd painting, presumably freighted with psychological meaning, of a nude woman in a landscape by Arthur Davies.
I had always thought of the Ashcan artists as social reformers, but on the basis of the few examples in this gallery, I wonder whether their objective in portraying members of the working class was simply to broaden the range of subjects deemed worthy of painting, rather than to depict these subjects with a particular sympathy for their economic insecurity. Today's work is particularly enigmatic: a rather small (perhaps 32" high and 26" wide) 1905 oil on canvas by George Luks titled, "The Old Duchess." The figure, shown in three-quarters view, appears to be sitting, her hands in her lap. I say "appears" because her face and her fanciful headdress are the painting's only clearly visible elements; the rest of her body, turned away from the viewer and clad in a dark shawl and voluminous gray skirt, fades into the black background. Despite the name given to the painting, the sitter's age is unclear: there are bags under her eyes, but her skin is unwrinkled. Her face is turned toward us, and she looks out with a baleful stare.
I think the title may be a reference to a Goya portrait of the Duchess of Alba; if so, it's a cruel one. The descriptive placard informs us that James Gibbons Huneker, a friend and admirer of Luks, described the subject as "an elderly hag with a distinguished bearing, a depraved woman of rank, who wore five or six dresses at once, on her head a shapeless yet attractive gear, and in her pocket she carried a fat roll of bills for purposes of dissipation, or bribes, or for bailing out some Tenderloin wreck. She is maleficence incarnate.'" A rather shocking way to describe a woman presumably afflicted with poverty and mental illness. Did Luks share his friend's sentiments?
I had always thought of the Ashcan artists as social reformers, but on the basis of the few examples in this gallery, I wonder whether their objective in portraying members of the working class was simply to broaden the range of subjects deemed worthy of painting, rather than to depict these subjects with a particular sympathy for their economic insecurity. Today's work is particularly enigmatic: a rather small (perhaps 32" high and 26" wide) 1905 oil on canvas by George Luks titled, "The Old Duchess." The figure, shown in three-quarters view, appears to be sitting, her hands in her lap. I say "appears" because her face and her fanciful headdress are the painting's only clearly visible elements; the rest of her body, turned away from the viewer and clad in a dark shawl and voluminous gray skirt, fades into the black background. Despite the name given to the painting, the sitter's age is unclear: there are bags under her eyes, but her skin is unwrinkled. Her face is turned toward us, and she looks out with a baleful stare.
I think the title may be a reference to a Goya portrait of the Duchess of Alba; if so, it's a cruel one. The descriptive placard informs us that James Gibbons Huneker, a friend and admirer of Luks, described the subject as "an elderly hag with a distinguished bearing, a depraved woman of rank, who wore five or six dresses at once, on her head a shapeless yet attractive gear, and in her pocket she carried a fat roll of bills for purposes of dissipation, or bribes, or for bailing out some Tenderloin wreck. She is maleficence incarnate.'" A rather shocking way to describe a woman presumably afflicted with poverty and mental illness. Did Luks share his friend's sentiments?
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