The Immortal Eight American Painting from Eakins to the Armory Show, 1870-1913

"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.