Robert Henri and his pupils were the most progressive painters in America—for all of five years. In 1908 Henri’s Young Turks were the scourge of the art establishment, radicals who defiantly formed the Eight after being snubbed at the incestuous annual exhibit of the National Academy of Design. In 1913 they were conservative also-rans, whose submissions at New York’s Armory Show revealed just how far America lagged behind the modernism of Europe. Such is the conventional view of American art history.

Of course, during this time the work of the Eight had changed not one bit. Its gritty realism still reeked of journalism and the pavement, which was after all its métier, reflecting the habits of men who had toiled as newspaper sketch artists and who had spent more time recording fires and arrests than in academic life study. During the 1890s, half of the future Eight had worked for Philadelphia dailies, where they learned to make forceful compositions out of the most unpromising subjects, and to do it swiftly and tersely. This training sank into their bones, and it is everywhere apparent in their subsequent paintings: William Glackens, who found his subjects at restaurants and race tracks; Everett Shinn, who lurked backstage at the ballet or in orchestra pits; George Luks, with his charmless renditions of livestock and heaving wrestlers, rotated to the least picturesque angle. But above all it was John Sloan whose urban vignettes earned the group the designation Ashcan School.

Since at least