In a thousand college notebooks students of the history of U. S. painting have taken notes on a little group known as "The Eight." Of these young painters, mostly from Philadelphia, four were originally newspaper illustrators, who fought to fame against the stilted classicism of academic painting in the early 1900's. Their particular and private gods were Edouard Manet, Velasquez and Goya. Referred to as "The Ashcan School" by outraged critics, "The Eight" were: Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William J. Glackens, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast and Everett Shinn. They were men of vivid personality and all lived to attain considerable success of one sort or another.
Readers of mass circulation magazines have long known Illustrator Everett Shinn as the creator of slinky voluptuous ladies with incredibly long legs and arms. But it was as Artist Everett Shinn that he gave at Manhattan's Morton Galleries last week the first exhibition in four years of his serious painting, reminded critics of his worthy background. There was on view a little something for everybody. Unquestionably first-rate were Artist Shinn's early Paris street scenes and New York views in the same manner, to which he has recently reverted. One canvas, worthy of Toulouse-Laut
rec at his best, was called Outdoor Stage, Robinson, France and showed, in the yellow glow of footlights under the night sky, an attractive concert singer in a bustle.
For sentimentalists there were such pieces as the flashily painted Exit Clown, Ballet Girl and Harlequin, and the portrait of Sir Henry Irving as Shylock. And for college boys there were the Shinn nudes, mostly in pastel on colored paper with the high lights carefully brought out. There were enough of these young ladies gazing into mirrors (see cut), reclining on sofas, etc., etc. to outfit a dozen cocktail bars.
Others of "The Eight" may have been better artists but none, including the late, lusty George Luks, had a more adventurous life than Everett Shinn. A fat little Quaker boy in Woodstown, N. J., he was known as "Pud" (pudding) to his contemporaries. Now 58, "Pud" Shinn is as wiry as a fox terrier, is better known as "Eve."
His first job brought him $4 a week from a Philadelphia chandelier factory. Not long after that he was doing sketches for the old New York World. Fifty-one times he dragged his heavy portfolio of pictures in vain to swank Harper's Weekly to get a job; on the 52nd visit he succeeded with a winter scene of opera crowds streaming out of the Metropolitan which he had painted over night.
"Eve" Shinn has been married four times. His third wife obtained a divorce in 1932 on the grounds that her husband forced her to pose nude in an unheated room, offered nude photographs of her to his friends as souvenirs. Two years ago he married an extremely pretty girl of 21. When he was younger he practiced acrobatics until he became expert, haunted vaudeville theatres, performed somersaults in theatre lobbies, went home to try to repeat the stunts he had seen on the stage. Once he spent the night with a one-eyed Civil War veteran sitting on the 3-ft. hat brim of the 37-ft. statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia's City Hall. Just before dawn the oldster slipped off into the Founder's outstretched arms, unharmed.