William James Glackens (March 13, 1870 – May 22, 1938) was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid down by the conservative National Academy of Design.

His dark-hued, vibrantly painted street scenes and depictions of daily life in pre-WW I New York and Paris first established his reputation as a major artist.

[2] His portrait work often included friends, family, and socialites, characterized by a keen eye for detail and a gentle, sometimes playful, depiction of his subjects.

"[5] John Sloan also attended the academy, and he introduced Glackens to Robert Henri, a talented painter and charismatic figure in Philadelphia art circles.

In 1957, Ira Glackens published an anecdotal book about his father and the role he played in the emerging realist movement in art.

"The Eight" was not a term of the group's own choosing, but after their first exhibition in 1908, it became their unofficial title in the press, alluding to the fact that the artists' cause had little to do with stylistic similarities and everything to do with art politics.

[11] Their show at the Macbeth Gallery was a small-scale "succès de scandale" and toured several cities from Newark to Chicago in an traveling exhibition curated by Sloan.

More importantly, they had initiated a national debate about acceptable subject matter in art and the need to end the constraints of The Genteel Tradition in American culture.

[13] Glackens, Henri, Sloan, Luks, and Shinn were key figures in the realist movement in the visual arts during the years (c. 1895–1920) when challenging writers of realist fiction, such as Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris, were gaining wider audiences and struggling to set aside the Genteel Tradition in American letters.

The genre aspects of Ashcan art are evident in his work of the time, particularly in paintings like Hammerstein's Roof Garden (1901), Easter River from Brooklyn (1902), Tugboat and Lighter (1904), and Winter, Central Park (1905).

"[14] By 1910, Glackens began to concentrate on a "highly personal coloristic style" which represented a break from the Ashcan approach to art.

Ultimately, Glackens was a "pure" painter for whom the sensuousness of the art form was paramount, not a social chronicler or an artist with a bent for politics or provocation.

At this time, millionaire-inventor Albert C. Barnes, a classmate and friend from Central High School, began to study and collect modern art.

Glackens returned from Paris with about twenty paintings, which included works by Cézanne, Renoir, Manet, and Matisse, formed the core of what became the Barnes Foundation Collection.

Not surprisingly, he was less unnerved by the European modernism of the 1913 Armory Show than some of his Ashcan colleagues who saw that exhibition as a threat to American realist art.

In contrast to many of his friends among The Eight, such as Sloan and Luks, whose personal lives were turbulent and whose finances were uncertain, Glackens enjoyed a happy marriage, a contented home life, and a steady career, though by the 1930s he was seen by a younger generation interested in abstraction, surrealism, and political art as an old-fashioned artist.

Although he distanced himself from some of their ideals, William Glackens continued to be considered an integral part of the realist movement in American art.

Despite the changing subject matter, Glackens’ work was clearly the product of a man who loved the fluid, unrestrained quality of oil on canvas.

[25] The charge was made that during the 1920s and 1930s “his once vigorous artistic personality had been blunted by too close an imitation of Renoir’s late style.”[26] Glackens himself seems not to have been affected by any doubts about his own purpose and originality.

"The model's slightly weary but forthright expression, and even the ribbon tied around her neck, call to mind Manet's Olympia...a modern Eve.

This lush painting portrays a robust, red-tied James B. Moore, restaurateur and middle-aged bon vivant, at a table with one of the many young women he squired about town.

The backs of their heads are reflected in the mirror behind them, as are the faces and profiles of others, including Edith Glackens and her art critic brother-in-law, Charles Fitzgerald.

'"[28] Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum, portrays Edith Glackens seated next to a fruit still life.

[30] Glackens’ collections are celebrated for their ability to bring the vibrancy of early 20th-century American life to the canvas, blending realism with the lively brushwork and color schemes of Impressionism.