Here he worked with William J. Glackens, George Luks and John Sloan, who became core-members of the Ashcan School, led by Robert Henri, which defied official good taste in favour of robust images of real life.

(In later years, Shinn would express his dismay over the development of photography as the new art form that eventually replaced drawing as the principal source of visuals in all American newspapers.)

The ability to convey animated movement and the attention to detail necessary for his newspaper illustrations is reflected in Shinn's paintings and pastels, especially those treating urban themes.

It was during Shinn's time in Philadelphia that artists Robert Henri, John Sloan, and Joseph Laub established the Charcoal Club as an informal alternative art school.

The group, which included Henri, Sloan, Shinn, and fellow illustrators and would-be painters like William Glackens and George Luks, reached a peak membership of thirty-eight and sketched nudes and critiqued of each other's work.

To his friends and fellow artists, Henri (the elder statesman of the group) urged the study of Whitman, Emerson, Zola, and Ibsen and the need for painters to forge a new style of art that spoke more to their time and experience.

Shinn left no record or notes of any kind about his time in Europe, but it is generally assumed that he saw the work of Daumier, Degas, and Lautrec while in France and Walter Sickert while in England.

[10] Echoes of the style of all four artists can be found in Shinn's work, especially in the affinity he shares with Degas in depictions of stages marked by unusual croppings and compositions.

Whether depicting ballet dancers, magicians, actors, acrobats, or vaudevillians, Shinn (who presumably spent a good deal of time at the theater himself) presents performance art as an enlivening and sensuous, if sometimes raucous, experience for both the men and women on the stage and the audience.

Shinn became friendly with a number of major theater professionals in New York, including playwright Clyde Fitch, actress Julia Marlowe, and producer David Belasco.

[12] About this space, one theater historian has written: "The rich walnut paneling, ornamental Tiffany lamps, and eighteen murals by Everett Shinn created a warm, comfortable setting for Belasco's standard mix of dazzling scenic effects and melodramatic hokum.

The show, which also traveled to several cities from Newark to Chicago, occasioned considerable comment in the press about appropriate styles and content in art and gave the Ashcan painters more national publicity than they had previously enjoyed.

"[15] Unlike the other members of The Eight, Shinn did not exhibit in the famous 1913 Armory Show of modern art[16] and, in fact, became over the years a confirmed anti-Modernist, expressing nothing but disdain for Picasso and Matisse.

His style, in the view of many observers, also took on a more facile, commercial quality, and some of his later works, like the murals painted for the bar of the Plaza Hotel, have an essentially nostalgic aim, reimagining in the 1940s the world of hansom cabs and city streets lighted by gas-lamps.

In his best years, Shinn was well-paid and owned large houses in Connecticut and Upstate New York, but he went through a vast amount of money (along with four wives and numerous mistresses) and was financially straitened in his final days.

Though his work is varied and resistant to easy categorization, it is considered most commonly in art histories in the context of The Eight and the Ashcan school, designations that do not quite fit the range of his individual vision.

Though Shinn is often associated with portrayals of more elegant settings (notably, theater interiors), this drawing is typical of his equally pronounced interest in working-class subjects and is a classic example of Ashcan realism.