The following year, Shinn moved to New York City and worked as a staff writer for the weekly publication Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.
In April 1866, after having returned to Philadelphia as a result of his parents' deaths the summer before, Shinn, accompanied by his sculptor friend Howard Roberts, traveled to France with the goal of continuing his studies in drawing and painting at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
He wrote to his sister in 1867, "Art I should like, and I have a vocation for it; but I think my near-sightedness, color-blindness and failing vision are pretty strong hints from nature that that career is not intended for me..."[1] Already in summer of 1866, while he was in Pont-Aven, Shinn looked again to writing for newspapers and magazines.
In 1869, in the United States again, Shinn wrote a series of articles about his experiences at the École des Beaux-Arts for The Nation, cementing his relationship with the magazine's founding editor, E.L. Godkin.
Shinn was also a member of the Tile Club, a group of New York artists and writers whose membership included Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.