Everett Shinn

Illustration for the book Toby Tyler: Ten Weeks with a Circus

1937

Everett Shinn, a future member of the Eight and remarkable, rather theatrical personality was born at Woodstown, New Jersey in 1873. Even more recent sources give 1876 as the year of Everett Shinn's birth (Zurier, Snyder, and Mecklenburg, 1995, p. 224) but the artist usually lied about his age to appear younger than he actually was. Edith DeShazo (1974, errata sheet) claimed that information from family members established the date of November 6, 1876 as Shinn's birthday. But if this is true, he would have enrolled at the Spring Garden Institute in Philadelphia to study industrial art at the age of twelve. Born to a Quaker named Isaiah Conklin Shinn and Josephine Ransley Shinn, Everett was their third child. He enjoyed a happy childhood as an undisciplined boy fond of sweets, acrobatics, and the circus (DeShazo, 1974, pp. 15-17). Shinn opted for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for instruction in the fall of 1893, and began as a staff artist for the Philadelphia Press. At that time William Glackens was working there as well, while John Sloan was at the Inquirer. A year later, Glackens was at the Press, and also, in 1894, George Luks joined the staff there. As DeShazo explained (1974, p. 29), "the Press art department became a meeting place for men both on the staff and off with similar artistic and literary interests." Members of the same group also met at Robert Henri's studio. By 1897, Shinn was in New York, working for the New York World where Luks had been for about a year. The rest of the "Philadelphia Four" (artist-reporters) would follow them before long. Shinn spent much of 1898 hounding the offices of Harper's until finally, the editor and publisher, Colonel George Harvey saw his portfolio, then commissioned a view of the Old Metropolitan Opera House in a snowstorm. The pastel appeared about a year later in the February 17th issue of Harper's Weekly, in 1900. Meanwhile, Shinn kept busy with decorative work (murals, screens, and door panels) at private residences and even in Trenton, New Jersey's City Hall. In 1899, the Boussod-Valadon Galleries gave Shinn his first one-man show. He continued to carry out commissions for illustrations (see Bullard, 1968). Shinn began exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy (1899-1908) and at the Art Institute of Chicago (1903-43).