Chateau Thierry

William Glackens worked as a newspaper and magazine illustrator in Philadelphia before first traveling to France in 1895 with fellow Ashcan School artist Robert Henri. His ability to sketch scenes quickly is evident in this painting that captures a vibrant tableau of life along the Marne River in the French village of Chateau-Thierry, which Glackens visited on his honeymoon in 1906. The man and woman in bathing costumes crossing the sunlit path in the middle ground are Glackens and his new wife, Edith; the figure in red swim trunks who is about to dive into the water is their freind, the American artist Alfred Henry Maurer.