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Ashcan

Like the artists of nineteenth century France, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, and Gustave Courbet, the American Ashcan painters captured the fleeting scenes of everyday life among the middle and lower classes at work and at leisure. Their movement was born In the early part of the twentieth century. They were a group of maverick painters primarily in New York City who set the foundation for depicting the  variety and scale of life in the rapidly changing city. Their name, like that of the Impressionists, was initially a term of derision branded by the prevailing critics, though it ultimately became their badge of honor. The painters of the Ashcan School wanted to create a new kind of art rooted in the raw, visceral day-to-day reality of the city - not the New York that was depicted by the popular bourgeoise painters of the time - but the New York of the Lower East Side and the Bowery, of newly arrived immigrants, dockworkers, nightclub performers, saloonkeepers, boxers, and the average workers trying to make ends meet while squeezing whatever small pleasure there was to be had out of life. Their art was populist, expansive, and committed to a documentary realism that was far-reaching and ahead of its time.