At the turn of the twentieth century, many Western painters sought to enhance the visual world through glorification. Portraits of politicians and socialites instilled pride in their moneyed subjects, while landscapes and narrative works told epic tales across massive canvases. In the United States, the industrial revolution altered the landscape of every major city, with skyscrapers rising rapidly and workers pressing their noses further to the grindstone.

Bourgeois painters were ill-equipped to portray urban development and its effects on everyday people, but one tight-knit group of working-class artists captured the spirit of this time by going against the mainstream. These artists, commonly known as the Ashcan school, had cut their teeth as political cartoonists during the rise of investigative journalism. Working in newspapers brought them closer to this rapidly industrializing social environment, instilling a sense of journalistic presence. They served the press in ways the camera would just a few decades later, leading their art from postimpressionism to documentary realism.