Bennard B. Perlman

Lively, scholarly, beautifully illustrated study of the 8 artists who brought a compelling new realism to American painting, 1870 to 1913. Henri, Glackens, Sloan, Luks, 4 more. 142 black-and-white illustrations.

The Immortal Eight

Painters of the Ashcan School

Walter Pach

Offers a behind-the-scenes look at a significant era in the development and emergence of modern American art.

The Walter Pach Letters 1906-1958

American Artists, Authors, and Collectors

Arthur Bowen Davies

This is the first full-length biography of the American artist Arthur B. Davies, who played a major role in twentieth-century American art's coming-of-age. It was Davies who made possible the landmark exhibitions of The Eight and The Rockwell Kent Independent, and in 1913 he emerged as the mastermind behind the Armory Show, the first large-scale display of European modern art in the United States. Drawing on extensive archival research, including previously unavailable letters and diaries, this book covers the breadth and depth of the artist's life and career, from his boyhood in Utica in the 1860s; through his close association with such artists and collectors as Robert Henri, John Sloan, Alfred Stieglitz, Lizzie Bliss, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller; to his death in Italy in 1928 in the company of his mistress, with whom he had lived a secret double life as "David A. Owen" for more than twenty years. Included are 101 color and black-and-white illustrations of Davies's own work, ranging from romantic dream visions to fragmented cubist forms, as well as photographs depicting his family and friends.

Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies, The

Robert Henri

Delaware Art Museum

Robert Henri, Painter

"Around the turn of the century, American art was at a low ebb. Painting was in a hopeless state of nothingness. Sentimental landscapes were produced by the hundreds with little resemblance to the American scene. The established art world showed little of the vitality that marked the rambunctious growth of a nation in the throes of establishing a great free enterprise social order. In Philadelphia and later, New York, artistic rebellion grew up around a group of talented artist-reporters who painted the world as they saw it, in all its beauty and grim reality. The Realist or Ashcan School of Art was born. At first, the Realist painters were despised and rejected because of their choice of subjects -- burlesque houses, Bowery bars, bedrooms, ragged urchins and dingy street scenes. But the biting truth of the Realists' pictorial observations could not be denied. The artists' determination to freely exhibit their art became a virtual battle for survival. This is the true story of the men in the forefront of the struggle to establish the first truly American tendency in art"--Front flap.

Bennard B. Perlman

Books

Your next favorite book is out there