ashcan school

American  

noun

(often initial capital letters)

1. a group of American painters of the early 20th century whose genre paintings were derived from city life.

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Example Sentences

While the newspaper-trained illustrators who became the ashcan school saw ugliness as a police court scene, their friend.

From Time Magazine Archive

Museums would not look twice at the work of naturalist painters such as John Sloan and William Glackens, who were sneeringly referred to as "the ashcan school."

From Time Magazine Archive

But they had long outlived their early scornful nickname: the "ashcan school."

From Time Magazine Archive