Reporters of the Brush

Before the turn of the century, four important U.S. artists served their apprenticeship together on the old Philadelphia Press (absorbed in 1920 by the Public Ledger, which in turn was absorbed by the Inquirer). The big four: George Luks, William Glackens, Everett Shinn and John Sloan. Their job, in the days before high-speed cameras, was to record, as clearly and dramatically as possible, the fires, strikes, ship launchings, trials, inaugurations--and even wars--which cameras catch now. They had to work fast to make each early-morning deadline, and yet get on paper the essential look and the significant details of every on-the-spot assignment.

The artists developed a kind of pictorial shorthand. Recalls Shinn: "Sketches, if any, made on the scene, were hurried; usually mere markings with numerals shot off at tangents. If a [building] fire was to be covered, then a marginal notation . . . 18 stories and seven across, representing windows. A quick note of some detail of a cornice or architectural peculiarity was drawn in more carefully. More crosses where fire blazed in windows." Back at the drawing-boards the sketches became detailed pictures.

Last week, a retrospective show of "Artists of the Philadelphia Press" opened in Philadelphia's Museum of Art. None of the few examples of war drawings had the static power of Winslow Homer's famed Civil War coverage for Harper's Weekly, nor the hell-for-leather zip of Hearst's Frederic Remington, but Glackens' Night after San Juan, which he drew while covering the Spanish-American War for the Press, was a topflight demonstration of vivid, accurate reporting. In the latter-day paintings, especially Shinn's The Hippodrome, Luks's The Spielers and Sloan's Wake of the Ferry, gallery-goers could see how a whiff of spot-news training had led to fine art happily free of the musty brown academicism of the time.

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