The Hucksters (Primary Title)

Jerome Myers, American, 1867 - 1940 (Artist)

20th century
American
oil on canvas
Unframed: 16 × 12 in. (40.64 × 30.48 cm)
Framed: 20 5/8 × 16 1/2 in. (52.39 × 41.91 cm)
45.20.2
Not on view

The Hucksters gives an insider’s perspective of the lives of peddlers or hawkers in Lower East Side, Manhattan. This part of New York City was a common subject matter among the Ashcan artists, many of whom Myers counted as his friends and colleagues. With its huddled masses and loose painterly brushwork, The Hucksters evokes the populist mood and hands-on, vernacular sensibility that also characterizes Myers’s biography, An Artist in Manhattan (1940). As with the Ashcan artists, Myers captured urban life in all its sullied dynamism; and also like them, he exhibited work at Macbeth Gallery in New York (indeed, he exhibited at Macbeth in 1908, just before the famed exhibition of the Eight, which featured works by Robert Henri, John Sloan, and other realists on display at VMFA).

signed lower right, "JEROME MYERS"
Gift of an Anonymous Donor
Rochester Exposition, Exposition Park, New York City, September 4 - 9, 1916
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC

Some object records are not complete and do not reflect VMFA's full and current knowledge. VMFA makes routine updates as records are reviewed and enhanced.