Jerome Myers

Who was Jerome Myers?

Jerome Myers was a U.S. artist and writer associated with the Ashcan School, best known for his sympathetic depictions of the urban landscape. He was one of the main organizers of the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced European modernism to America.

Born in Petersburg, Virginia and raised in Philadelphia, Trenton and Baltimore, he spent his adult life in New York City. Myers worked briefly as an actor and scene painter, then first studied art for a year at Cooper Union and then at the Art Students League for a period of eight years where his main teacher was George de Forest Brush. In 1896 he went to Paris, but only stayed a few months, believing in the direction and reality of his own work, and that his main classroom was the streets of New York's lower East Side. His strong interest and feelings for the new immigrants and their life resulted in well over a thousand drawings, as well as paintings, etchings and watercolors capturing the whole panorama of their lives as found outside of the crowded tenements which were their first homes in America.

In a 1923 magazine article he explained why cities were his greatest source of inspiration: