Philadelphia Before You Were Born
The art and artists of the Philadelphia Press newspaper from the 1890s - the last decade newspapers used illustrators, before they switched to photography.
Many of the illustrators, such as John Sloan, went on to have wonderful careers.
More drawings below
The Genial Idiot. Part of fiction series
Flies Crawling over the Skeleton (By Daniel Beard)
THE DRAWINGS
In the 1890s local newspapers used local artists to illustrate current events. The newspapers hadn’t yet mastered photography enough to be able to place the photos in the newspapers. Sometimes the artists would use photographs as a guide for their illustrations. Most often, they would create the drawings themselves. The artists, employed by the newspapers, used ink or crayon drawings. The process used by the newspapers to produce the drawings in the newsprint was photochemical in nature. Linecut printing (which couldn’t reproduce shading or tone very well) was used first. The images were pure black and white. By 1900 halftones began to be used. It is capable of reproducing fine tonal variations.
In the 1900s newspapers began to master photography. Today, outside of the op-ed cartoon and occasional illustrations, photography is the desired newspaper way to illustrate the world. Unfortunately, the artists rarely signed their work for The Philadelphia Press so it’s almost impossible to know who drew which images, other than by guessing at the style of the drawing. Many of the original pen drawings were sold, alas, by C. W. Parker, a New York promoter who came to Philadelphia every three months to run a sale of the drawings.
Easter Worshippers Leaving Holy Trinity Church
THE ARTISTS
The Ashcan Group, also known as the Eight. Several of the many artists became famous when they left Philadelphia for New York where they became a part of the Ashcan group. The Ashcan Group consisted of eight artists who drew and painted the realism of urban life.
The local artists who formed this group were:
William Glackens. Glackens worked at the Public Ledger before joining the Press. Glackens was considered a master draughtsman and could draw anything from memory. Glackens also helped Albert Barnes choose the paintings which Albert Barnes collected for his now famous Barnes Foundation. Several Glackens paintings are part of the Barnes collection.
John Sloan worked for The Philadelphia Press for ten years. He drew a large number of their Sunday supplement feature drawings. Earlier he worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Many of his paintings and drawings can be seen at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware.
Everett Shinn. A 22 x 44 foot mural of his was painted for the city hall in Trenton, New Jersey. Shinn worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer before working at the Press.
George Luks. His most noted work is The Wrestlers.
Glackens, Sloan and Albert Barnes all went to Central High School around the same time. Three other members of the Ashcan group were Ernest Lawson, Arthur B. Davies and Maurice Prendergast. The last member of the group was Robert Henri. Henri also spent much time in Philadelphia and influenced many other artists. Henri believed that art should be "a social force that creates a stir in the world." Henri was an admirer of Thomas Eakins, also a noted Philadelphia realist. Henri put together an exhibition of these eight artists, in 1908, in New York for Robert Macbeth, Senior. Frederick J. Gregg, a writer for the New York Evening Sun dubbed the artists at the Macbeth Gallery exhibit - the “Eight” The name stuck. The exhibit also touredin Philadelphia, Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Bridgeport, CT and Newark, NJ.
Charity Ball at the Academy of Music
Some of the other artists for the Philadelphia Press were Daniel Beard, Frederick P. Gruger, Edward Wyatt Davis, James Preston, J.C. Fireman, Floyd Campbell, Harry Wickey and Cornelia, Barnes. Most of the Press artists also worked in a variety of other disciplines – drawing and painting for magazines and for books. Other Philadelphia newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Bulletin and The Philadelphia Record, used artists as well.
Some of the above-noted Ashcan group worked for these other papers, but it was The Philadelphia Press that had the best collection of artists (including many non-Ashcan illustrators). The Philadelphia Press was later acquired by the Public Ledger, which in turn was acquired by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
On the Boardwalk – Scene from Atlantic City
THE ATMOSPHERE
Everett Shinn captured the feeling of working for a newspaper in the 1890s with his write-up for the “Artists of the Philadelphia Press” exhibit held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art—October 14-November 18, 1945. According to Everett Shinn, the artists would use anything at hand to make a drawing: “envelopes, menu cards, scraps of paper, laundry checks and rendered bills.” Shinn did a drawing once on the white satin lining of his straw hat.
According to Shinn “Sketches, if any, were made on the scene, were hurried; usually mere markings with numerals shot off at tangents. If a fire was to be covered then a marginal notation...eighteen 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. Marks indicated fire engines, scaling ladders, hydrants, hose and other apparatus...At the drawing-boards these marks would metamorphize into a scene of
action.”
“A newspaper, designed to serve a public that demands its news with everything else in one gulp, lands each morning at the back door with the milk bottle...Orange juice eases the way for the shock of the headlines...Coffee dilutes a stack of buttered editorials...Toast soaks up the weather forecast...Milk-sloshed cereals dissolve politics...Marmalade sweetens the comics...and the obituaries are tucked away with a dose of bicarbonate of soda...to later explode on a commuter’s train.”
“The ink valves spit and giant spools of virgin paper take the imprint of world affairs...stamping out fact and fiction, conjecture and lies, smearing a black two-mile track of current news...The same, the same, with every turn of the rollers the same...two hundred thousand
times the same.”
“The cry of the press rises higher and higher… Appeasement cataracts in myriad events...Like a crushed fly an honored name is smeared across the type-bed and like a disfiguring–birthmark shrieks across the morning issue...Two trains take the same switch...hundreds maimed...a raging inferno envelops the imprisoned passengers...A Japanese spy caught in League Island Navy Yard...Coast defense gun tested...A scientist reveals the wonders of the Roentgen ray...Heavy rains threaten dam...Liner founders off Asbury Park...Coast Guard unable to get life line to ship...Jury finds Holmes guilty of triple murder...his victims found buried in quicklime...Eighteen men injured in trolley strike...Atlantic City pier burns. ..Penn’s eleven downs Lafayette, thirteen to seven...Soaring rise in Bethlehem steel...Buffalo Bill’s wild west show at Gentleman’s Driving Park...Assembly ball at the Academy of Music. News, News, last minute news, while the deadline tightens tripping up sanity...confusing, tangling...demanding super action and strangely getting it...Late news...and tomorrow’s blasting surprise as the press slows down to take it on… An avalanche of tragedy...United States battleship Maine blown up in Havana harbor...This is NEWS...this is WAR...Three letters, black
like death cover the front page and the press rolls on.”
A Portion of the Magnificent Chrysanthemum Show at the Academy of Music
Acknowledgements
Thanks to:
Delaware Art Museum. Dr. Joyce K. Schiller (Curator). Heather Campbell Coyle (Curator of American Art). Elizabeth H. Hawkins (Researcher).
Philadelphia Museum of Art. Stacy Kirk (Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow, Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Lauren Rosenblum (Curatorial intern in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, The Philadelphia Museum of Art)
All images are from the Philadelphia Press 1892-1896 except for one or two from 1891 and 1897 and those in the last chapter, which are from 1898-1903.
The quotes by Everett Shinn are reprinted with permission from Philadelphia Museum of Art, Artists of the Philadelphia Press: William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan (exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 14—November18,1945) PAGES 7-12.
Philadelphia Before You Were Born. Compiled by Joseph Glantz © 2010
A Merry Band of Skaters on Juniper Lake, Near Bala
Tea Leafs by John Sloan
The Crowd of Visitors at the Exchange During the sessions
