American arts

One of the first painters to visit British America was John White (c – c. 1606), who made important watercolor records of Native American life on the Eastern seaboard (now British Museum). White first visited America as the artist and map-maker for an expedition of exploration, and in the early years of the Colonial period most other artists trained in Western styles were officers in the army and navy, whose training included sketching landscapes. Eventually the English settlements grew large enough to support professional artists, mostly portrait-painters, often largely self-taught. Among the earliest was John Smybert (1688–1751), a trained artist from London who emigrated in 1728 intending to be a professor of fine art, but instead became a portrait painter and printseller in Boston. His friend Peter Pelham was a painter and printmaker. Both needed other sources of income and had shops. Meanwhile, the Spanish territories later to be American could see mostly religious art in the late Baroque style, mostly by native artists, and Native American cultures continued to produce art in their various traditions.

John White John White Ceremony of Secotan warriors in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by John White in Watercolour by John White of Roanoke Indians

John Smybert Portrait of Edward Nightengale, ca Benjamin Morland, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art

Ashcan School The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, was an artistic movement in the United States during the early 20th century that is best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York, often in the city's poorer neighborhoods. The most famous artists working in this style included Robert Henri (1865–1929), George Luks (1867–1933), William Glackens (1870–1938), John Sloan (1871–1951), and Everett Shinn (1876–1953), some of whom had met studying together under the renowned realist Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and others of whom met in the newspaper offices of Philadelphia where they worked as illustrators. The movement has been seen as emblematic of the spirit of political rebellion of the period.

Ashcan School George Luks, Street Scene, 1905, Brooklyn Museum Ashcan School artists, c. 1896, left to right, Everett Shinn, Robert Henri, John French Sloan

Ashcan School Jacob Riis, Bandit's Roost, 1888, (photo), considered the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City. George Bellows, Cliff Dwellers, 1913, oil on canvas. Los Angeles County Museum of Art