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William Glackens
American, 1870-1938
At Mouquin's, 1905
Oil on canvas
122.4 x 92.1 cm (48 1/8 x 36 1/4 in.)
Signed, lower left: "W. Glackens"
Friends of American Art Collection, 1925.295
William Glackens—a member of an association of artists called the Eight—was at the center of avant-garde American painting at the turn of the twentieth century. Rejecting the academic standards of the influential National Academy of Design in New York, Glackens and his fellow urban realists focused unflinchingly on the city around them, vividly recording the street life and leisure activities they encountered. Mouquin’s was a fashionable New York restaurant frequented by Glackens and members of his circle. Combining portraiture with genre painting, he depicted the restaurateur James B. Moore sharing a drink with Jeanne-Louise Mouquin, the wife of the proprietor. The artist’s wife, Edith, and Charles Fitzgerald, a local art critic and champion of Glackens’s work, are reflected in the large wall mirror. Jeanne Mouquin is the focal point of the composition; not only did Glackens render her dress and cloak with fluid, eye-catching brushstrokes, but her mysterious, abstracted gaze also creates an unresolved tension within the work. Perhaps Glackens intended to make a social commentary; many contemporary writers maintained that anomie was one of the psychological consequences of rapid change in European and American cities. Criticized for its unabashed depiction of men and women drinking together, At Mouquin’s suggests the pleasures and the perils of modern life.
— Entry, Essential Guide, 2013, p. 46.
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Tenth Annual Exhibition, Nov. 2, 1905-Jan. 1, 1906.
New York, Macbeth Galleries, The Eight, Feb. 3-15, 1908.
Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago Paintings by Eight American Artists, Sept. 8-Oct. 8, 1908; traveled to Detroit Institute of Arts, Dec. 1908, John Herron Art Institute of Indianapolis, Jan. 6-29, 1909, Cincinnati Art Museum, Feb. 8-28, 1909, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Mar. 5-31, 1909.
San Francisco, Department of Fine Arts, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, June 2-Sept. 6, 1915
Paris, Chambre Syndicale des Beaux Arts, Exhibition of American Art, June 9-July 5, 1924.
Art Institute of Chicago, Thirty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Oct. 29-Dec. 13, 1925.
New York City, Museum of Modern Art, American Painting and Sculpture 1862-1932, Oct. 31, 1932-Jan. 31, 1933.
Art Institute of Chicago, Century of Progress Exposition, June 1-Nov. 1, 1933.
Art Institute of Chicago, Century of Progress Exposition, June 1-Nov. 1, 1934.
Toledo Museum of Art, Twenty-Second Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, June 2-August 25, 1935, no. 21.
Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth Atheneum, American Painting and Sculpture of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Centuries, Jan. 29-Feb. 19, 1935.
Cleveland Museum of Art, American Painting from 1860 Until Today, 1937.
Baltimore Museum of Art, Two Hundred Years of American Painting, Jan. 15-Feb. 29, 1938.
New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, William Glackens Memorial Exhibition, Dec. 14, 1938-Jan. 15, 1939.
Art Institute of Chicago, Half a Century of American Art, Nov. 16, 1939-Jan. 7, 1940.
Northampton, Mass., Smith College Museum of Art, Aspects of American Painting 1900-1940, June 12-22, 1940.
New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, This is Our City, Mar. 11-Apr. 13, 1941.
Brooklyn Museum, The Eight, Nov. 24, 1943-Jan. 16, 1944.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Artists of the Philadelphia Press, Oct. 14-Nov. 18, 1945.
London, Tate Gallery, American Painting, June-July 1946.
New York City, Kraushaar Gallery, Paintings and Drawings by William Glackens, 1948-1949.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 75th Anniversary Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by 75 Artists Associated with the Art Students Leagure of New York, 1951, cat. 27, ill.
New York, Wildenstein and Company, Landmarks of American Art 1670-1950, Feb. 26-Mar. 28, 1953.
New York Century Club, Mar. 31-May 30, 1954.
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, One Hundred Fifieth Annual Exhibition, Jan. 15-Mar. 13, 1955.
Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, Fifty Paintings: 1905-1913, May 14-June 12, 1955.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, American Painting, 1955.
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Retrospective of Carnegie International Exhibitions, 1959.
Minneapolis Museum of Art, Four Centuries of American Art, Nov. 27, 1963-Jan. 19, 1964.
City Art Museum of St. Louis, William Glackens in Retrospective, 1966-1967; traveled to Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institute, New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art.
Lakeview Center for the Arts and Sciences, The Eight, Sept. 12-Nov. 9, 1969.
New York City, National Academy of Design, Turn-of-the-Century America, June 30, 1977-May 28, 1978.
New York City, Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Painters of Modern Life: Impressionism and Realism, 1994-1995; traveled to Ft. Worth, Amon Carter Museum, Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, The American Century: Art and Culture, 1999.
Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Life's Pleasures: the Ashcan Artist's' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925, August 2-October 28, 2007; traveled to New York Historical Society, November 18, 2007-February 10, 2008; Detroit Institute of Arts, March 2-May 25, 2008, New York and Detroit only.
Art Institute of Chicago, Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, November 10, 2013-January 27, 2014; traveled to Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, February 22-May 18, 2014, cat. 18.
The Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, William Glackens, February 23-June 1, 2014; traveled to Water Mill, New York, Parrish Art Museum, July 20-October 13, 2014; Philadelphia, Barnes Foundation, November 8, 2014-February 2, 2015 (Philadelphia only) cat. 45.
Publication History
Elizabeth Thompson Colleary, The WIlliam J. Glackens Collection in the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale (2014) pp. 30-33, ill.
Ownership History
C.W. Kraushaar Gallery, New York, by 1925; sold to The Art Institute of Chicago, 1925.
