Before the art world went abstract, it went to the streets—and two women stood at the heart of its fire and its fame.

Many know the name Robert Henri, the man who taught America how to see the beauty in the soot-stained, chaotic turn-of-the-century New York City, yet few know the two women who breathed life into his revolution. Margery Ryerson and Marjorie Organ were more than mere witnesses to the Ashcan movement, as they would come to kindle Henri’s artistic fire both throughout and after his life.

One, a pioneering cartoonist and later his wife, used her pen to capture the wit of New York society, while the other used hers to preserve a master’s legacy. Though Henri made the broad brushstrokes of American realism, it was the women in his life that filled in the picture—and carried the Ashcan flame.

Through the unique lens of his family’s history, Craig Le Clair brings his grandaunt Marjorie Organ’s world to life in this novel, exposing a fierce struggle for artistic identity in a world that tried to keep women on the margins. The Tale of Two Margerys is the untold story of the hearts behind the art that carried the flame of American realism into the modern era.

The Tale of Two Margerys

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