Edmund Marion Ashe

Background

Edmund Marion Ashe was born in 1876 in New York and grew up in Staten Island.

Education

Edmund Ashe studied at the Metropolitan Art School and at the Art Students League with Charles Vanderhoof and John Stimson.

Career

Edmund began his career as an illustrator, producing drawings for various magazines, including Colliers, Harper's, and Scribner's. Ashe also painted "Gibson Girl" watercolors and provided illustrations for such books as "In Camp with a Tin Soldier" by John Kendrick Bangs in 1892 and several of Richard Harding Davis's works. From 1896 until 1909, during the administrations of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, Ashe served as the White House artist-correspondent for Leslie's Weekly, the New York Tribune, and New York World. During that period, he also taught at the Art Students League and at William Merritt Chase's New York Art School, where he met and befriended Robert Henri.

In 1905, Ashe moved to Westport, Connecticut and, together with George Hand Wright, was a founder of the art colony that developed there. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Silvermine Guild in Norwalk. Active in several arts organizations, including the New York Watercolor Club and Society of Independent Artists, Ashe was one of the first members of the Society of Illustrators, having joined in the first month of the club's founding in 1901. Ashe taught illustration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1920 until 1939, eventually becoming head of the Department of Painting and Design. During off-hours, he applied himself to genre scenes of the local steel industry, creating a number of expressive, nearly hallucinatory images of the workmen and their powerful machinery.

Ashe's earliest oils were rendered in an impressionist style. During the first decade of the twentieth century, however, he adopted a more progressive realist approach. Thereafter, his paintings assumed a darker tonal range and broader brushstrokes, reminiscent of the work of Robert Henri and the Ashcan school. Until his 1939 retirement to Charleston, Ashe continued to spend the summer months in Westport, traveling with George Wright and others to various locations, including the Maryland shore. He also continued to exhibit in New York. In 1929, a selection of his paintings of the people of the Cumberland Mountains was shown with great success at the Ferargil Galleries, his principal dealer there. The artist died in 1941.

Achievements

• Edmund was most known for his varying styles of art, which included faithful representations of factories, posters of World War I bond drives, and watercolors of the Gibson Girl.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Boat In From Baltimore

  • Pot Of Tea And Ice Cream

Views

Edmund Marion Ashe adhered to the artistic traditions of Impressionism.

Membership

Edmund was a member of the New York Watercolor Club and was one of the first members of the Society of Illustrators, having joined in the first month of the club's founding in 1901.

Connections

In 1893, Edmund Ashe married Estelle Egbert in West New Brighton. They had two children, Dorothy and Edmund, Jr. His son was also an artist and drew illustrations for newspapers.

Spouse:

Estelle Egbert

Daughter:

Dorothy Ashe

Son:

Edmund Ashe Jr.

Friend:

Robert Henri

colleague:

George Hand Wright