William Glackens was born in Philadelphia, where he began his artistic career. He attended high school with fellow artist John Sloan and future inventor, millionaire, and art collector Albert C. Barnes. While working as an illustrator and reporter for The Philadelphia Record, Glackens also took night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Sloan introduced him to Robert Henri. Glackens became a member of Henri’s art circle and joined him in Europe in 1895, where they shared a studio in Paris for a year.
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Upon his return to the U.S., his friend George Luks helped Glackens find work in New York as an artist for New York World. He also worked as a freelance illustrator for other publications while pursuing his painting. His wife Edith was also an artist and their home was often a gathering place for artists including Jerome Myers, Everett Shinn, and Guy Pène du Bois. Glackens joined his fellows in the 1908 showing of The Eight and was actively involved in their attempts to break the influence of the National Academy by promoting a new kind of realism that relied on urban subject matter and lively, sometimes less polished painting styles. While his earlier paintings aligned more closely to the other artists of the Ashcan School, around 1910 Glackens adopted a more Impressionist style, earning him the nickname of “the American Renoir.”
Glackens was commissioned by his friend Albert C. Barnes to aid him in building an art collection and returned from a trip to Europe with works by major Modernists of the era including Matisse, Manet, Renoir, and Cézanne—artists whose paintings would play major roles in the 1913 Armory Show. An award-winning artist active in the city, Glackens served as the president of the Society of Independent Artists in 1916, and became a full member of the National Academy in 1933.
Glackens’ interest in bright color and more cheerful interiors and landscapes set him apart from the other artists of the Ashcan School both stylistically and thematically. This portrait, which remained in the artist’s collection until his death, bears his hallmark palette of vivid hues and the loose brushwork that characterizes his mid-career paintings.