Lena and Imp

Glackens began his career as a reporter-illustrator in Philadelphia, while also taking night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He began oil painting in 1894 at the urging of his friend and mentor, artist Robert Henri. The following year, Glackens visited Paris, where he had a transformative encounter with the work of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Their anti-academic approach to color, composition, and everyday subjects informed his art for decades, as seen in this late painting of his red-haired daughter. Such interior or studio settings were common in Glackens’ later work, a break with the urban scenes of street urchins and performers he and other artists of the Ashcan School painted in New York in the late 1890s. Glackens’ passion for Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art also shaped the renowned Barnes Collection; Glackens advised Albert C. Barnes and purchased for him works by Paul Cézanne, Edouard Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and other artists at the core of his collection.