In his 1905 painting “Central Park, Winter,” Ashcan School artist William Glackens “portrays a group of well-behaved children sledding down a gentle slope in New York’s Central Park under the watchful eyes of adults who dot the perimeter of a snowy knoll,” states the website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“The children are warmly dressed and the adults are fashionably clothed, signaling that this is a story of middle-class recreation.”
“Despite their nominal commitment to telling the unvarnished truth about modern life and urban hardship, Glackens and other Ashcan artists viewed their world through rose-colored glasses, presenting the city euphemistically and, as here, depicting people at leisure in quasi-rural surroundings rather than in their overcrowded home neighborhoods.”
Glackens often painted winter scenes in the city. Here he capture more fashionably dressed women and children on a slushy day in Washington Square Park.
Tags: ashcan school artists, Central Park 1905, Central Park in winter, New York in winter, New York William Glackens, paintings of William Glackens, sledding in Central Park, William Glackens
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