Ashcan artists frequently depicted the prosaic sites of the early twentieth-century American city. With painterly brushwork and sketchily drawn forms, artists such as John Sloan, George Bellows, and Everett Shinn restituted the value of vernacular with subjects not necessarily considered artistic, such as grimy streets, popular entertainment, and children at play. VMFA also displays work by Samuel Woolf and other painters of the period who found culture in the commonplace.

In every media and era, the portrait is a powerful expression of human identity. Portraits make individual presentation possible while inviting interpretation by others—by viewers who read them with an eye to their own sense of self and society. Consequently, the meaning and relevance of a single “likeness” is constantly refreshed. These works by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, George Catlin, Cecilia Beaux, Beauford Delaney, and John Singer Sargent represent the range of portraits in VMFA’s collections.

Mark Twain coined the evocative name for this era. He viewed American society as having a luxurious appearance, that belied its larger social issues. In the decades following the Civil War, vast economic growth and new transportation networks spurred artists to seek education abroad, among them Charles Caryl Coleman, John White Alexander, and Julius LeBlanc Stewart. As a result, narrative subjects gave way to cosmopolitan design elements and an emphasis on aestheticism.