Anshutz, Thomas

Thomas Pollock Anshutz (1851–1912) was an American painter and teacher. He studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City, and moved to Philadelphia in 1875 to study under Thomas Eakins at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. He entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1876, becoming Eakins''''s assistant there in 1878, and his successor in 1886. He later studied in Paris at the Académie Julian, 1892-93. His most famous painting, The Ironworkers'''' Noontime (1880), depicts several workers on their break in the yard of a foundry. Painted near Wheeling, West Virginia, it is conceived in a naturalistic style similar to that of Eakins, although Eakins never painted industrial subjects. Art historian Randall C. Griffin has written of it: "One of the first American paintings to depict the bleakness of factory life, The Ironworkers'''' Noontime appears to be a clear indictment of industrialization. Its brutal candor startled critics, who saw it as unexpectedly confrontational—a chilling industrial snapshot not the least picturesque or sublime." It is now in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Anshutz''''s students at PAFA included several painters who would become known as the Ashcan School: Robert Henri, George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, and Everett Shinn. Among his other notable PAFA students were Charles Demuth, John Marin, Arthur B. Carles, Paul-Jean Martel, Charles Sheeler[4] and Albert Laessle. As a teacher, Anshutz, according to art historian Sanford Schwartz, "was known as much for his approachability as his sarcasm, which apparently wasn''''t of the withering variety." Towards the end of his life he proclaimed himself a socialist. He died in 1912.