Everett Shinn
Everett Shinn, a painter, illustrator, designer, and playwright who was best known for his images of the theater, was born in New Jersey in 1876. He studied industrial design in Philadelphia from 1888–1890, and in 1893, he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. At the same time, Shinn supported himself as an artist-reporter for the Philadelphia Press. While in Paris, Shinn was inspired by the theater scenes of Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Jean-Louis Forain. His work changed dramatically; he began to paint performers in action and employ unusual vantage points. Shinn, with Henri, Glackens, Luks, Sloan, and Davies, were among a group of artists, referred to as the Ashcan School, who were intrigued with contemporary urban culture and the gritty side of New York . He differed, however, in that he was drawn more to the theater and Park Avenue life than to the Bowery, shifting away from the seamy cultural emphasis of his Ashcan colleagues. 'It's just that the uptown life with all its glitter was more good-looking... Ah, the clothes then, the movement of the satins, women's skirts and men's coats and swish of wild boas, oh Lord,' he once ecstatically observed
Further reading on Everett Shinn:
http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/shinn-bio.htm
http://www.antiquesandfineart.com/articles/article.cfm?request=890
Shinn's first oil painting devoted to what would become his signature subject: popular forms of entertainment, including the circus, vaudeville, and the theater.
In The Hippodrome, The focus is on the spectators who are watching soe kind of trapeze act, and according to their faces there is much of the performance left out. The only performer we can see is the trapeze swinger who comes very close to the front row, and they are focused on something else. This depiction of the spectator shows a "hive-mind" reception of a spectical, implying the performance is striking the audience in a way that they react and focus on the same object, and it is implied there is at least two subjects performing, the one seen in the painting, and the one being focused on. The theater is also packed, almost uncomfortably so. Every patron seems to be a small piece of a theater machine with twice as many eyes. It's the overwhelming social atmosphere of this painting that seem like an opposite extreme to Edward Hopper's Solitary Figure in a Theater.
Theatre Box was painted in 1906.
This painting depicts the back of a woman who is watching a play, alone in a theater box. What is strikingly odd about this painting is that the crowd, presumably in the regular seats, are packed much like the spectators in Shinn's The Hippodrome. Why then does Shinn juxtapose this faceless woman with a crowd of theatergoers? Is it as simple as rich/poor or is there more to work with here. Most of a stage actress is also exposed to the frame, and the light hitting her contrasts the darkness of the woman in the theater box. She is alone, maybe lonely, or she may be waiting for her husband who just stepped out. All eyes are on the stage the mass of the spectators engaged in the show, and the relaxed manner that the theater box women seems to be sitting implies the resonants of emotional greatness, maybe even the first wave of it, that reaches out to the crowd and keeps people watching, hopeful of the moments they paid for.
In the Loge, was painted by Shinn in 1903.
This painting captures a moment of dilligent spectators, focused on the stage, while the third subject stares in the opposite direction, in what looks to be the opposite side of the theater. Maybe the subject is trying to steal the attention away from another spectator she may know, or maybe, like Shinn, her subject is a spectator. This painting represents a rebellious nature within a conformed response to theater. The social aspect of going to the theater with friends and family is taken as primary to the subject while the others enjoy the emotional thrill of the performance, not with enthusiasm, but reservations probably due to the preservation of their social status.