Everett Shinn (1876-1953)
Green Ballet, 1943
As a member of the Ashcan school, Everitt Shinn was a multitalented artist who worked as an illustrator, muralist and even a playwright. Shinn began his artistic career as an artist-reporter for the Philadelphia Press. During that time he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy until 1897 when he moved to New York City. Shinn worked as an illustrator throughout his life, but only when it suited him or if his financial situation demanded it.
From 1899 to 1911, he completed a series of murals and panel paintings for private homes, the Stuyvesant Theater and City Hall in Trenton N.J.
Shinn used a variety of subject matter in his paintings. Life in the slums as well as middle-class café society were all scenes that he enjoyed painting. He felt that all aspects of city life were there for the people to savor and enjoy.
His Green Ballet (1943), painted when the artist was sixty-seven years old, thematically and stylistically evokes his work from the turn of the twentieth century. Although an oil, it possesses the sketchiness of his pastels. He was skilled at portraying the American vaudeville and variety theatre, he enjoyed representing female dancers, often in the spirit of Edgar Degas, who had immersed himself in the world of classical ballerinas. Shinn painted his first theatrical piece in 1900, and ballet pieces also date from this period. That he was able to sustain a lively vision for more than forty years reveals the strength of his visual engagement with these subjects.
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