Catalog of an exhibition held at the National Gallery, London, Mar. 3-May 30, 2011.

100 greatest works by Bellows, Sloan, and the other painters of the Ashcan School.

"Zurier vividly locates the Ashcan School artists within the early twentieth-century crosscurrents of newspaper journalism, literary realism, illustration, sociology, and urban spectatorship. Her compassionate study newly assesses the artists' rejection of 'genteel' New York, their alignments with mass media, and their innovative ways of seeing in the modern city."—Wanda M. Corn, author of The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-35 If the Ashcan School brought a special and embracing eye to the city, Rebecca Zurier in her richly contextual and impressively interdisciplinary book explains and evokes that historically specific urban vision in all its richness. Finally, in Picturing the City, we have the study these painters have long deserved. And we gain new and delightful access to New York City at the moment of its emergence as a compelling embodiment of metropolitan modernity."—Thomas Bender, Director, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University "Picturing the City is both meticulous and wide-ranging in its assessment of the Ashcan artists and their passionate efforts to represent New York. It charts their pleasures and problems, warmth and prejudices, generosity and differences, originality and formula. It takes seriously their habits as journalists and provides the most complete sense of their immersion in a world of urban spectatorship and vision. Rebecca Zurier has written a wonderful, timely book that will be a benchmark for any future discussions of them."—Anthony W. Lee, author of Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco "Rebecca Zurier takes us on an intellectually exhilarating and breathtakingly beautiful visual voyage through turn-of-the-century New York City as the Ashcan painters saw it. As we watch them learn a new way of looking in the commercially dynamic, sensual New York of a century ago, we too see that time and place with fresh eyes. Inevitably, thanks to Zurier, the way we look at city life today will change as well."—Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

"Robert Henri and artists of the Ashcan Circle and the Eight stand today as America's first modern art movement: rejecting their academic training and the centuries-old National Academy of Design's exhibition practice, they forged a new and vital art that represented shifting American values and the country's own sense of identity. The Milwaukee Art Museum holds one of the largest and most important collections of art related to the Ashcan Circle and the Eight in the country, totaling nearly two hundred works across media, including paintings, drawings and illustrations, pastels, and prints. This catalogue features rarely-seen works and popular favorites, emphasizing the Ashcan School's contribution to the formation of American modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century"--

This exhibition sets the art of Edward Hopper in the context of the diverse and controversial movements dominating American art during the first half of the twentieth century.