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Season’s Greetings! We are sending our newsletter a little early this month, not to disturb you during the holidays. The gallery will be closed from December 22 - January 4, but you can always reach us with any inquiries at (312) 640-1302 or info@madrongallery.com. We are grateful for your support and patronage this year. Wishing you a joyful holiday season and looking forward to a bright New Year! William Glackens got his start in the art departments of Philadelphia newspapers in the day of the artist-reporter. These predecessors to modern photojournalists were given assignments by editors like, “Cover that fire on Locust Street!” In one well-known anecdote the artist was sent to sketch a crime scene that had already been roped off by police. To access the scene Glackens supposedly climbed through an open window only to fall into a pool of the victim’s blood. He began establishing his career as a freelance illustrator in 1897, and eventually his work would appear in 16 magazines, including Scribner’s, The Saturday Evening Post, and McClure’s. In 1904 Glackens illustrated a nine-part serial, “Sequil, or Things Whitch Ain’t Finished in the First,” by Henry A. Schute for The Saturday Evening Post. Glackens’ ink drawing, Dinner Party (Keene Stuck Out Her Tung), was originally produced as an illustration for this publication and appeared in the April 23, 1904 edition. In his illustration, Glackens draws with quick, strong lines. His pen strokes making repetitive marks and cross-hatching. In the upper left corner he likely used a white wax pencil to make invisible lines that resist the ink to create an atmosphere comprised of negative cross-hatching. Later the artist’s son, Ira Glackens, would recall that his father hated doing illustrations and would often “[make] his drawings over and over again, until they satisfied him—tearing up or throwing aside the versions he deemed unsuccessful, until at last he was satisfied.” Perhaps Glackens was frustrated with some aspects of his illustration assignments (he once complained that few of his original drawings would be returned to him once he submitted them to a publication), but it didn't mean he lowered his standards. Glackens’ Dinner Party is evidence of this, as the body of the gentleman at right is drawn on another piece of paper that is adhered to the surface of the original work. Perhaps Glackens modified the illustration, or he made a mistake, but he was happy with the rest of the sketch, including the man’s face and head, the collage a trace of the artist’s commitment to quality despite a potential flaw. While publishers received complaints that Glackens' work was "too realistic" for a public accustomed to sentimental imagery, critics were just starting to celebrate his work. In the same year Dinner Party was published in The Saturday Evening Post Glackens exhibited paintings at the National Arts Club in New York with Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, Arthur B. Davies, and Maurice Prendergast. Four years later Ernest Lawson and Everett Shinn would join them to make up “The Eight” for an exhibit at the Macbeth Gallery. Their radical style was met with derision from the press as they were referred to as “The Apostles of Ugliness” and later dubbed the Ashcan School. But, their art became the progressive vanguard in American art, struggling against sentimentality and academic conservatism they were eventually heralded as interpreters of contemporary life.
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