Arts column: A fine teacher and artist

This oil painting was made by Anshutz  the year before he died at the relatively young age of 61. 

Prior to his death he had been “experimenting with neo-impressionism and Fauve colour, producing path finding pictures that seemed almost unbelievable for an artist who came out of the tradition of Philadelphia realism.” (William Innes Homer, preface to Thomas Anshutz: Artist and Teacher by Randall C. Griffin).

This work is an excellent example of Homer’s description. 

Anshutz studied at the National Academy of Design in New York before becoming a student of Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. 

Bridged a gap

In time, he had established his reputation as a fine teacher as well as artist and succeeded Eakins as Head Instructor. 

In this capacity, he bridged the gap between the traditional realist style (which had earned Eakins’ reputation as America’s most revered artist after Winslow Homer) and the group of young men destined to make up the core of the Ashcan School of New York realists such as Robert Henri, John Sloan and Charles Sheeler as well as Charles Demuth, leader of the avant garde Modernism. 

Elise Outerbridge is curator at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art.