37 Facts About William Glackens

William James Glackens was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid down by the conservative National Academy of Design.

William Glackens is known for his work in helping Albert C Barnes to acquire the European paintings that form the nucleus of the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

William Glackens's dark-hued, vibrantly painted street scenes and depictions of daily life in pre-WW I New York and Paris first established his reputation as a major artist.

William Glackens was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his family had lived for many years.

William Glackens graduated from the prestigious Central High School in 1890.

William Glackens painted numerous still lifes, focusing on flowers, fruit, and other everyday objects.

William Glackens enrolled in evening classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, studying under Thomas Anshutz.

In 1895, William Glackens traveled to Europe with several fellow painters, including Henri, to paint and to immerse himself in European art.

William Glackens first visited Holland where he studied the Dutch masters.

William Glackens then moved to Paris, where he rented a studio for a year with Henri and enjoyed his first exposure to the art of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

Later in life, a confirmed Francophile, William Glackens returned periodically to paint in Paris and the south of France.

William Glackens later became a sketch artist for the New York Herald.

In 1904, William Glackens married Edith Dimock, the daughter of a wealthy Connecticut family.

William Glackens was an artist, and they lived together in a Greenwich Village townhouse, where they raised two children, Lenna and Ira.

In 1957, Ira William Glackens published an anecdotal book about his father and the role he played in the emerging realist movement in art.

In New York, William Glackens became associated with a group of artists known today as The Eight, five of whom are considered Ashcan realists.

Ultimately, William Glackens was a "pure" painter for whom the sensuousness of the art form was paramount, not a social chronicler or an artist with a bent for politics or provocation.

William Glackens commissioned Glackens to buy him some "advanced" works while on a trip to Paris.

William Glackens returned from Paris with about twenty paintings, which included works by Cezanne, Renoir, Manet, and Matisse, formed the core of what became the Barnes Foundation Collection.

In 1916, William Glackens served as the president of the newly founded Society of Independent Artists, whose mission was to provide broader exhibition opportunities for lesser-known artists.

William Glackens continued to travel to France between 1925 and 1935 to study the work of the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists.

William Glackens's paintings received gold medals from annual exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1933 and again in 1936.

In contrast to many of his friends among The Eight, such as Sloan and Luks, whose personal lives were turbulent and whose finances were uncertain, William Glackens enjoyed a happy marriage, a contented home life, and a steady career, though by the 1930s he was seen by a younger generation interested in abstraction, surrealism, and political art as an old-fashioned artist.

William Glackens died suddenly while vacationing in Westport, Connecticut on May 22,1938.

William Glackens was interred at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.

William Glackens's legacy is linked to that of the Ashcan school and The Eight.

William Glackens depicted scenes of urban life in Paris and its suburbs and painted the theaters and parks of Manhattan.

William Glackens continued this style and subject matter for some time until he began to break away from The Eight.

Later William Glackens became best known for his portraits, and late in his life he focused on still lifes.

William Glackens's art did not reflect the social crises of the day, such as the Great Depression; rather, it offered a refuge from that darkness.

William Glackens' working method included making numbers of sketches which focused on separate elements of the composition.

Chez Mouquin, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, is arguably William Glackens's most celebrated painting.

William Glackens is drinking, while the lady is turned away, looking somewhat less interested in the convivial scene around them.

Portrait of the Artist's Wife, in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum, portrays Edith William Glackens seated next to a fruit still life.

The largest collection of William Glackens' art has been housed since 2001 at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, where an entire wing is dedicated to his work; the museum holds approximately 500 William Glackens paintings in its permanent collection.

William Glackens' collections are celebrated for their ability to bring the vibrancy of early 20th-century American life to the canvas, blending realism with the lively brushwork and color schemes of Impressionism.

William Glackens's works continue to be admired for their portrayal of both the ordinary and the elegant aspects of life.