Everett Shinn
Revue
1908
Not on view
Date
1908
Classification
Paintings
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Overall: 18 1/8 × 24 1/4 × 7/8in. (46 × 61.6 × 2.2 cm)
Accession number
31.346
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Rights and reproductions
© artist or artist’s estate
By 1903, the theater and thriving vaudeville houses that drew crowds from every social class had become Everett Shinn’s primary subject. Typical of much of Shinn's work, Revue shows a fragmentary glimpse of the theater from which the whole scene can be imagined. Shinn uses broad, loose brushstrokes to reveal a dancer, her face warmly bathed by the footlights, exposing her ankle in mid-curtsy. His brushwork picks out the dainty ruffles and elaborate textures of the dancer’s dress, while at lower left the gently oblique point of view includes the orchestra leader. Revue was one of the paintings Shinn selected to represent his work in the landmark 1908 exhibition of urban realism organized by Robert Henri at the Macbeth Galleries in New York. The Eight, as the eight artists in the show were quickly dubbed, had individual styles, but all were rebelling against the rarefied and aristocratic themes long demanded by the academic establishment.
