Thomas Pollock Anshutz

Thomas Pollock Anshutz (1851–1912) was an American painter and teacher.

He studied art in Paris at the Académie Julian, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins. His most famous painting, "The Ironworkers' Noontime" (1880), depicts several workers on their break in the yard of a foundry. Painted near Wheeling, West Virginia, it is conceived in a naturalistic style similar to that of Eakins, although Eakins never painted industrial subjects. [Griffin, 2004, p. 59] Art historian Randall C. Griffin has written of it: "One of the first American paintings to depict the bleakness of factory life, "The Ironworkers' Noontime" appears to be a clear indictment of industrialization. Its brutal candor startled critics, who saw it as unexpectedly confrontational—a chilling industrial snapshot not the least picturesque or sublime." [Griffin, 2004, p. 61] It is now in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Anshutz, like Eakins before him, became an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy, where his students included several painters who would become known as the Ashcan School: Robert Henri, George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, and Everett Shinn. Among his other notable students were Charles Demuth, John Marin, Arthur B. Carles, Paul-Jean Martel and Charles Sheeler. [Schwartz, 1982, p. 17; Martel http://pauljeanmartel.com/bio1.html ]

As a teacher, Anshutz, according to art historian Sanford Schwartz, "was known as much for his approachability as his sarcasm, which apparently wasn't of the withering variety." [Schwartz, 1982, p. 16] Towards the end of his life he proclaimed himself a socialist. [Griffin, 2004, p. 150] He died in 1912.

Notes

References

*Griffin, Randall C. (2004). "Homer, Eakins, & Anshutz: The Search for American Identity in the Gilded Age". University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-02329-5
* [http://pauljeanmartel.com/bio1.html Martel, Maclovia: online biography of Paul-Jean Martel. Accessed August 5, 2008]
*Schwartz, Sanford (1982). "The Art Presence". New York: Horizon Press. ISBN 0818001356

External links

* [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/anshthom/ Thomas Pollock Anshutz papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art]