Art Chowder September | October 2017, Issue 11 | Page 44

Sir Hubert von Herkomer, RA (1849-1914)
On Strike
1891
Oil on canvas
89 3/4 x 49 3/4 ”
Royal Academy of Arts, London
T
hough knighted by both the kings
of Bavaria and of England, German-En-
glish artist Sir Hubert von Herkomer
knew poverty as a child and sympathet-
ically portrayed the plight of the down
and out. His On Strike (1891) powerfully
evokes empathy toward the striking
worker and his family with profound
realism. The man, standing at their
doorway, deep in thought, stares ahead
with knitted brow to an uncertain future
as he fills his pipe. His wife slumps on
his shoulder and one imagines her asking
herself how long is this going to last and
what will be the outcome? They could
end up on the street if the strike fails.
Their youngest, about age 2, frowns,
symbolically holding a spoon; she’s
hungry.
In the 20th century, the so-called
“Ashcan School” of American Realists
typically focused on the back-street side
of life in the urban landscape, reveling
in displaying the exuberant hurly-burly
of modern urban life, plain and simple:
the theater, Coney Island, the boxing
arena, the subway. In his Cliff Dwell-
ers (1913), George Bellows presents a
bustling scene in a crowded New York
City neighborhood. It is not surpris-
ing that Bellows was associated with
Socialism 5 , along with other members of
the Ashcan circle, John Sloan and Robert
Henri. The painting is not an exercise in
social commentary but rather a carefully
composed vignette of a typical moment
in the teeming metropolis.
44 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE