Earl Shinn
Earl Shinn
American, 1837 – 1886
An art critic and one of the Tile Club’ s scribes, Earl Shinn was born in Philadelphia to Orthodox Quaker parents. Despite their wishes for Shinn to pursue a moral career, he chose to devote his life to the arts— a non-essential vocation in the eyes of the Quaker community. In 1859, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts( PAFA), and in 1864, he moved to New York and took a position at Frank Leslie’ s Illustrated Newspaper. Upon the death of his parents in 1865, he used his inheritance to further pursue his dream of becoming an artist; the following April, Shinn, and the sculptor Howard Roberts, set out to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Unfortunately, the school had suspended enrollment to foreign students, and Shinn would have to wait until the fall. He stayed in Paris, however, and that summer Shinn and Roberts traveled to Pont-Aven with Robert Wylie who was also associated with PAFA. In 1868, Shinn completed his studies at the École under Jean-Leon Gèrôme and headed back to the States. Despite his training, and perhaps because he was near-sighted and colorblind, Shinn never followed his intent of becoming a professional painter. Instead, he turned to art criticism.
In 1868, Shinn began writing for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and two years later, he moved to New York where became an art critic for the Nation and later art editor from 1874 – 1879. He also contributed to Lippincott’ s Magazine, writing about several private art collections in Philadelphia, Scribner’ s Monthly, the New York Evening Post, and The Art Amateur. Widely published, Shinn is best known for his books on the elevation of public taste and several renowned art collections; such works include The Art Treasures of America and Mr. Vanderbilt’ s House and Collection. He also wrote the first two chapters of A Book of the Tile Club, and upon his death, it was completed by Francis Hopkinson Smith. Throughout his career, Shinn never wrote under his given name instead choosing the pseudonym Edward Strahan, perhaps out of respect for his Quaker upbringing.
Napoleon Sarony( American, b. Canada, 1821 – 1896), Earl Shinn, photograph, ca. 1865, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, original in Haverford College Library, Quaker Collection.
REFERENCES: Adams, Oscar Fay. A Dictionary of American Authors. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904.
Haverford College Library, Haverford, PA, Special Collections, Quaker Collection, Morris-Shinn-Maier Collection, Coll. No. 1191.
Koppelman, Constance Eleanore.“ Nature in Art and Culture: The Tile Club Artists, 1870 – 1900.” PhD diss., State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1985.
Lenehan, Daniel Timothy.“ Fashioning Taste: Earl Shinn, Art Criticism, and National Identity in Gilded Age America.” Master’ s thesis, Haverford College, 2005.
116 THE TILE CLUB: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting