Hopper's highly original work gives us an uneasy view of modern life in America, stressing in particular the loneliness and isolation of man in the urban environment.

By temperament and by training, Hopper was a realist. Following in the aesthetic tradition developed by Manet, Degas and the Impressionists in the nineteenth century, he had no time for idealization, prettification or fantasy he had no time for beauty, in the conventional sense of that word. His aim was to recreate the experience of reality intensely perceived, showing us the kind of people, places and things that we might see every day, yet somehow imbuing them with that strange and elusive quality we usually, for want of a preciser term, call 'mood'.

At his best, Hopper was a painter of modernity he delighted in representing those things that make modern life modern, from petrol stations to cafeterias. His main province is the public place; private life is only glimpsed through window, in doorways, at a distance. He presents a detached view, as if observing modern man for the purposes of some behaviour study. His brushwork is slow, deliberate and dull, like the most deadpan of commentaries, and his colour can be almost cruelly harsh, seeming to condemn the garishness of modern taste.

Hopper disliked being pigeon-holed as a painter of 'the American scene' there seemed something patronizing about it. Yet the modern life he depicts is unmistakably and insistently modern life in the USA. Hopper's great strength was his eye for a good subject, and what better subject for a painter of modernity than a New World, the discordant grandeur of which had virtually never been exploited in art?

Though Hopper is best known as an oil painter, some of his most important early work was in watercolour and etching. He first won recognition as a painter with the daintily executed, sunlight-filled watercolours he made in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1923, and he continued to use the medium with a relaxed, lively touch throughout his life. The black-and-white technique of etching lent itself more readily than watercolour to representing the seamy side of the American scene, and Hopper's etchings of the early 1920s dwell upon landscapes cut across by railway tracks and life in cheap apartment blocks. It was here that we see his peculiar brand of realism beginning to emerge.

One of the leading ideas in Hopper's work is the inhumanity of the manmade. He can suggest the hugeness and bleakness of a big city by showing just a street corner or the view from a train window. Architectural forms take on a strange alien presence, mean, hard and repetitive in the city, aggressively ornate in the suburbs and small towns. Sometimes the environment is allowed to speak for itself, like a stage-set without actors. Elsewhere there are people, but they are somehow temporary; they seem not really to inhabit the place where they happen to be.

The principal legacy of Hopper's Paris days, when he saw and imitated the work of the Impressionists, was an abiding interest in the play of light and shade on objects, especially the effects of sunlight on buildings, inside and out. Hopper orchestrates light as ingeniously as any lighting manager in the theatre, and the shadows and areas of light take on as much of a life of their own as the figures and objects over which they play. Indeed, they perform the crucial function of enlivening and competing with those figures and objects.

The angles from which Hopper's subjects are viewed may look casually chosen, even accidental. He will sometimes crop a scene so that a figure is cut in half; sometimes show the main figure to one side as if by mistake, allowing most of the composition to be taken up with something ostensibly rather boring. But these are calculated and essential effects, often to emphasise a sense of alienation. Photographs might also play a part in the process, although the image is always quite transformed in the final painting.

Another of Hopper's recurrent themes is transience. His scenes of travel carry implications that transcend the modern-life context they stand in an age-old poetic tradition in which the journey is used to suggest man's journey through life. The roads and railways in Hopper's paintings, the travellers sitting on trains or waiting for who knows what in hotel rooms and lobbies, are images of human existence as a transient thing, images of mortality.

The people in his work often seem-to be in a world of their own, gazing dreamily into space or intently reading. Sometimes the parts of the setting around their heads or in front of their eyes will seem to contain their hovering thoughts, but there is rarely any sense of communication between them. Instead, they tend to be divided from one another by the furniture or the architecture into separate compartments of space. They are not brought together by any definite storyline either. Despite his training as an illustrator, Hopper deliberately avoids narrative content in his works. Something is going on but there is no way of telling what, and the situation is all the more fascinating for its ambiguity.

Hopper was above all a master of expressive space and, in a way, the spaces between the figures are more important than the figures themselves. The world he creates in his paintings seems to yawn with emptiness. Most obviously, he will use empty seats to suggest absence, imparting a lonely and isolated air to the people who are present. More subtly, his compositions are contrived to make us look for something that is not there, to give an uneasy feeling of watching and waiting for someone to arrive, or some event to occur. To increase our unease, he will slightly distort perspective, just enough for us to sense that something is wrong without being able to say exactly what it is. He was a realist, but with an angle, and his aims and methods were hardly as straightforward as that term might imply.

Writer – Marshall Cavendish 

Labelled as vulgar by the critics, the Ashcan school of painters was a flourishing and original group whose inspiration was drawn from New York street scenes and the seamier side of city life.

In the early years of the 20th century, American painting finally emerged from the shadow of European art and began to assert its own identity. Leading these advances was a group of social realist painters who came to be known as the Ashcan school.

The leader of this influential group was the painter and teacher Robert Henri. Born Robert Henry Cozad, Henri changed his name after his family was forced to flee Cincinnati following his father's involvement in a shooting incident. Henri's own work came firmly within the European orbit, his portraits bearing a close resemblance to those of Manet. However, Henri's true importance lay in the direction that his teaching gave to the realist movement. One commentator described him as a 'silver-tongued Pied Piper'.

Henri travelled to Europe on several occasions in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1888, he was in Paris, studying under the academic painter, Adolphe Bouguereau and, in 1895, he visited Holland with William Glackens. Like Henri, Glackens' link with the Ashcan school was tempered by his obvious fondness for European art and his canvases reveal a particular liking for the work of Renoir.

On his return to the States, Henri settled in Philadelphia and, from 1892-95, he taught at the Women's School of Design. His own studio became a popular meeting place for artists and it was during this period that the future members of the Ashcan school first came together. Many of these artists worked initially as illustrators on newspapers. George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan and William Glackens all began their careers this way, before Henri persuaded them to take up painting and translate the immediacy and topicality of their journalistic work into  a vigorous new form of American art.

Henri preached a positive brand of liberal humanism, stressing his belief in progress, justice and the common bonds of humanity. He called upon artists to portray modern American life, not with the superficial prettiness that was popular in the academies, but with the social awareness of a Goya or a Daumier. 'Be willing to paint a picture that does not look like a picture,' was his maxim.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Philadelphia realist painters migrated to New York, where the overcrowded suburbs gave an increasingly urban slant to their pictures. Cinema audiences and street scenes in the slums were typical subjects, while bars like McSorleys provided a virtual replica of night life in the Latin Quarter of Paris.

In New York, however, they also came up against the opposition of the National Academy of Design. This imposing body had been founded in 1826 and was, in its early days, an important sponsor of native American art. By the time that Impressionism and Realism made their appearance, however, it had become extremely conservative. In 1907, Luks, Glackens and Shinn were among the artists who had their works rejected for its annual show. Henri, who was one of the selection committee on this occasion, withdrew his own entries in protest and set about organizing an independent exhibition.

The result was a show by 'the Eight', which took place in February 1908 at the Macbeth Galleries, where Henri had previously held a one-man exhibition. 'The Eight' were not a cohesive group and this was to be the only time they exhibited together. Nonetheless, the vitality and modernity of the paintings on display made this a landmark of American art and a rallying point for supporters of the avant-garde. The critics, however, were 'less enthusiastic. 'Vulgarity smites one in the face at this exhibition,' complained one correspondent, and the feeling that certain artists were glorying in the noise and the squalor of city E life earned them the tag of 'the Ashcan school'.

Only five of 'the Eight' were attached to the Ashcan group Henri, Luks, Shinn, Sloan and Glackens. Of these, probably the artist who best typified its spirit was John Sloan, who is sometimes known as 'the American Hogarth'. Sloan was a committed socialist and was later a co-founder of The Masses, a political journal to which Henri, Luks and Bellows all contributed E illustrations. His diaries show how closely he based his paintings on the scenes and incidents that he witnessed in the city streets. Hopper was a fervent admirer of his work and in an article of 1927, entitled 'John Sloan and the Philadelphians', he singled out the former's Night Windows for particular praise. Then, a year later, he produced his own version, using the same voyeuristic theme of a woman glimpsed through an open window.

Where Sloan viewed the life of the poor with sympathy and as a forum for political struggle, George Luks found the slums a source of vigour, excitement and modernity. Luks, himself, was a flamboyant and brash character and sought to project this image in a series of extravagant fabrications about his early career. His claims to have earned a living as a coal miner and as a fighter called 'Chicago Whitey' and 'the Harlem Spider' are probably apocryphal, but it is true that he was almost killed by a firing squad when, as a reporter, he was sent to cover the Spanish-American war in Cuba. Luks' painting shows a similar sense of adventure, with a loose handling and brushwork that reveals a clear debt to Frans Hals. His style is best exemplified by his depiction of wrestlers.

Fighting scenes were also popular with George Bellows, another painter associated with the Ashcan school. Bellows did not exhibit with 'the Eight', but his art contained many of the aggressively American qualities that typified the spirit of the group. He never went abroad and thus found it easier than his colleagues to ward off European influences. In addition, he was a keen sportsman and seemed to symbolize the Ashcan ideal of the all-American, red-blooded male.

In his youth, he played semi-pro baseball at Columbus, Ohio, and was invited to join the Cincinnati Reds. Bellows chose art as a career instead, although his continuing interest in sport is evident from his paintings. He depicted baseball, polo and tennis scenes, but is most famous for six stirring pictures of boxing matches.

Prize-fighting was illegal in New York at this time, and bouts were staged in private athletic clubs, with both the spectators and the fighters taking out temporary membership. Bellows' studio was almost opposite Sharkey's Club in Broadway, and this venue provided a rich source of material for him. His brutal ringside views are remarkable both for the blurred, mask-like faces of the audience and for their sheer presence which, in the absence of photographic reporting, must have seemed all the more striking. Bellows emphasised his interest in the physicality of such scenes. 'Who cares what a prize-fighter looks like?' he commented, 'its muscles that count.

Bellows had considerable conventional success, becoming the youngest Associate of the National Academy in 1909. For his colleagues, however, it was more important to set an alternative standard to these academic plaudits. In 1910, Henri organized the Exhibition of Independent Artists; it was the first American show to have no jury and no prizes, and where each painter paid for the space he used.

Three years later, modern art made its decisive breakthrough in America at the Armory Show. Ironically, the impact of the European contributions at this exhibition made the work of the urban realists seem old-fashioned and heralded their decline. It required the emergence of Hopper, Henri's pupil, to underline the true achievements of the Ashcan school.

Writer – Marshall Cavendish

Hopper had already forged his distinctive style so evocative of urban desolation when the Wall Street Crash of 1929 shattered the American Boom and international hopes for peace and prosperity. A world depression and the 'Hungry Thirties' were just around the corner.

For most of 1929, the Western world was not only prosperous but peaceful. One government after another committed its people to the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact which renounced war as an instrument of policy. The USSR and USA, though non-members of the League of Nations, adhered to the Pact, which eventually had 65 signatories. In 1929, the Young Plan tackled the remaining cause of ill-feeling between Germany and the wartime Allies by slashing the burden of reparations, and Allied troops began evacuating the Rhineland, which had been occupied since the end of the War. The French statesman Aristide Briand put forward proposals for a federated Europe.

A spate of books appeared which were more or less openly anti-war, concentrating on its horrors rather than questions of national 'war guilt'. Three famous examples, published in 1929, were Robert Graves's autobiography Goodbye To All That, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and the German writer Erich Maria Remarque's international best-seller later a famous film All Quiet on the Western Front.

The economic situation in the West was somewhat shaken except in the United States, where real wages and national wealth had doubled since the War. Prices of shares soared on the Wall Street Stock Exchange, till it seemed that, if you bought, you were certain to make money. Speculative mania raised the Dow Jones index to 300 by the end of 1928, and the trend continued through 1929. The index peaked at 381 in

August 1929; then, in September, confidence faltered and on 'Black Thursday', 24 October, the Crash came, with wave after wave of panic selling. By November, Dow Jones was down to 197 and thousands of speculators had been ruined. Frightened people rushed to secure their remaining capital, causing a disastrous run on the banks followed by closures that created new panics. In a downward spiral, industries were disrupted and millions became unemployed. The Great Depression lasted for years and, since the USA was a great creditor nation (and was soon to start calling in its loans), it spread all over the industrialized world. Apart from shattering the European economies, the Depression wrecked the Young Plan, destroyed many people's faith in democracy, and made possible the rise of Hitler and other dictators.

This year also marked the beginning of a new era for Soviet Russia, where Joseph Stalin had emerged as the leading figure. Stalin's principal rival, Trotsky, went into exile, and his theory of fomenting world-wide 'permanent revolution' was abandoned in favour of Stalin's policy of building 'socialism in one country'. At the same time Stalin defeated the 'Right Opposition', which opposed as premature the policy of collectivizing agriculture. The Rightist leader, Bukharin, and his closest associates were expelled from the Politburo.

Other events of 1929 included Alexander, King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, declaring himself dictator, and re-naming his kingdom Yugoslavia. As a result of the Lateran Treaties between the Papacy and Mussolini's Italy, the Pope ceased to be the 'prisoner of the Vatican' (self-immured since the new Italian state seized the city of Rome in 1870). The Vatican was recognized as an independent city-state and Catholicism became in effect the state religion.

In 1929, the 'Talkies' were all the rage, and cinemas everywhere were being re-wired for sound. Sunbathing had become popular, and the first precautionary aids sun-tan lotion and Mexican straw hats appeared. The German Graf Zeppelin airship flew around the world while Richard Byrd, the American pioneer aviator, flew over the South Pole. The Museum of Modern Art in New York was opened. The ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev died, as did the two giants of First World War France, Marshal Foch and George Clemenceau. More ominously, so did the architect of Franco-German reconciliation, Gustav Stresemann.

Writer – Marshall Cavendish