SLOAN, JOHN 1871-1951

Painter

Early Years

John French Sloan was born on 2 August 1871 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, a lumber town where his family had a cabinetmaking business. After losing their business and their home during the depression of 1873, they moved to Philadelphia in 1876, when John was five. There he spent hours in a great-uncle's library, reading the classics and paging through magazines such as Punch and Harpers Monthly. He especially liked the illustrations, keeping a scrapbook of them and illustrating his own copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island when he was twelve. As a teenager he began to sell his pen-and-ink drawings; he also earned money by designing calendars and greeting cards.

A New Career and an Important Friend

When he was twenty-one Sloan took a job as an illustrator for the Philadelphia Inquirer. That same year he met and became friends with the realist painter Robert Henri and began a year's study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. For several years Sloan's artwork took the form of illustrations for newspapers (first the Inquirer and then the Philadelphia Press) and for literary magazines. But in 1897, under the influence of Henri, Sloan turned his attention to painting, producing portraits and scenes of Philadelphia. Three years later his paintings were shown in exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Arts Club in New York City, where the exhibit also included works by Henri and some of his other disciples—William Glackens, George Luks, Arthur B. Davies, and Maurice Prendergast. Like Sloan, Glackens and Luks were newspaper illustrators. By 1904 the group, including Sloan and his wife Dolly, had all settled in New York City.

The Eight

In New York Sloan produced etchings and paintings of the city, many of which were shown in galleries and small exhibitions. He briefly substituted for Henri as a teacher at the New York School of Art, where students included George Bellows and Edward Hopper. After their works were passed over by juries for established exhibitions, Sloan and other realists in the Henri circle, which also included Everett Shinn and Ernest Lawson, began to discuss the possibility of showing their own work. In 1908 The Eight, as the group had come to be known, mounted an exhibition in a New York City gallery, creating great public interest and some furor. One reporter called the realists "apostles of ugliness," but high attendance confirmed the value and relevance of their art. In 1910 the group held another show, this one open to other artists. The 1 April 1910 opening of the Exhibition of Independent Artists, which included some five hundred works, was attended by two thousand people. The show's success set the stage for the revolutionary Armory Show of 1913, in which most of The Eight also exhibited. Sloan's contributions to the Armory Show included two of his best-known works of urban realism, Sunday, Girls Drying Their Hair and McSorley's Bar (both 1912).

Work at The Masses.

During his first decade in New York, Sloan sold illustrations to Collier's and Century magazines. Beginning in 1911 he began contributing to a new socialist magazine, The Masses, becoming its art editor the next year. Like many Americans at the time, Sloan believed that socialism offered promising solutions to the world's problems. In his two years at the magazine, he produced an impressive body of political cartoons and scenes of city life. In 1913 he supervised the art for the Paterson Strike Pageant, a show that dramatized the plight of striking silk-mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Sloan's hopes for a better world through socialism began to fade. He left The Masses that year.

Ongoing Work and a New Organization

During the mid 1910s Sloan spent his summers in New England, where he concentrated on landscapes. In New York he continued to paint cityscapes, including Backyards, Greenwich Village (1914) and Bleecker Street, Saturday Night (1918). He had his first one-man exhibition at Gertrude Whitney's Studio Club in 1916, the same year he began a long affiliation with the Art Students League of New York, teaching there until 1938. He was among the organizers of the Society of Independent Artists, which mounted a large exhibition in the Grand Central Palace in New York City in April 1917; the following year he was elected president of the society, remaining in the office until the society disbanded in 1944. Beginning in the 1920s, John and Dolly Sloan spent part of each year in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he became an admirer of Native American art. In 1931 he organized the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts, which toured the country. During the 1930s Sloan began sketching and painting nudes and had several one-man shows in New York and other cities.

Final Tributes

In 1929, the year he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Sloan's work was included in the Nineteen Living Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was frequently asked to speak and write on American art, and in 1941 the Society of Independent Artists held a testimonial dinner in his honor. Sloan continued to paint through the 1940s while living in New York with his second wife, Helen, a pupil whom he had married after the death of his first wife in 1943. In 1950 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and awarded the Gold Medal for painting by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He died on 7 September 1951 of complications following surgery.

Sources:

Bruce St. John, John Sloan (New York: Praeger, 1971);

St. John, ed., John Sloans New York Scene (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).

John Sloan

American painter John Sloan (1871-1951) was a pioneer realist. He specialized in city street scenes, New Mexican subjects, and the nude.

Born in Lock Haven, Pa., on Aug. 2, 1871, John Sloan was taken to Philadelphia as a child. After he finished high school, he worked for booksellers and dry-goods dealers. He studied briefly under Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and in 1892 was employed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as a newspaper artist. Robert Henri encouraged him as a painter, and he was influenced by Japanese prints. In 1895 he moved to the Philadelphia Press, for which he drew full-page color pictures until 1902. His early paintings were street scenes, somber in color, vivid and direct in execution. These were first exhibited in 1900 in Chicago and Pittsburgh, and he was included in a New York group show in 1901.

Sloan married in 1901 and in 1904 moved to New York. For many years he supported himself as a magazine illustrator and, after 1906, as a teacher. A series of 10 etchings of city life in 1905-1906, rich in content, often with undercurrents of humor or irony, found no purchasers. Though his work was seen in these years in the Carnegie International Exhibition and the National Academy of Design, more often than not his pungent and unidealized urban scenes were rejected by academic critics. It was in part his rejection by the academy in 1907 that caused Henri to withdraw from that organization. Sloan was one of the group of painters called "The Eight," whose exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908 called attention to the radical subject matter and vigorous execution of five of the painters—Henri, Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn.

Sloan and his wife joined the Socialist party in 1910, and he became art editor of its magazine, The Masses, to which he contributed some of his most compelling drawings. In 1910 and again in 1913 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the New York State Assembly. He withdrew from the party in 1914 but remained on the staff of The Masses for 2 more years. He sold his first painting in 1913 to Dr. Albert C. Barnes. He was well represented that same year in the celebrated Armory Show but was too completely a representational artist to have much sympathy for the new European movements exhibited there.

Sloan was an active teacher at the Art Students League and served as its president in 1931. He was president of the Society of Independent Artists from 1918 until his death; this organization staged large, no-jury, no-prize shows from 1917 until 1944.

From 1914 to 1918 Sloan spent the summers in Gloucester, Mass., where he painted landscapes as well as people. He traveled to the Southwest for the first time in 1919, and for the rest of his life spent long periods in Santa Fe, N. Mex., where he built a house in 1940. The life of the Indians, the ceremonial activities of the Spanish inhabitants, and the dramatic desert landscape provided powerful new subjects. In 1931 he was active in organizing a large exhibition of Indian tribal arts.

After about 1930 Sloan painted no more city scenes but became increasingly concerned with studies of the nude. The late paintings are monumental and technically innovative. In contrast to the direct execution of his earlier work, these are carefully constructed with monochrome underpainting, upon which an elaborate surface of bold cross-hatchings in color gives startling relief.

The power of Sloan's personality is well conveyed in Gist of Art (1939), a compilation of statements made to his students which were recorded by Helen Farr, who became his second wife, in 1944. Sloan died on Sept. 7, 1951, in Hanover, N.H.

Further Reading

Sloan's Gist of Art (1939) is an eloquent statement of his attitudes and methods, with interesting comments on his own works. Sloan's New York Scene: From Diaries, Notes and Correspondence, 1906-1913, edited by Bruce St. John and introduced by Helen Farr Sloan (1965), describes Sloan and his world. Lloyd Goodrich, John Sloan (1952), published in connection with an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, is the best critical study. Van Wyck Brooks, John Sloan: A Painter's Life, is a sympathetic personal account. Guy Pène du Bois, John Sloan (no date), is a brief but useful picture book. There are interesting personal sidelights in Bennard B. Perlman, The Immortal Eight (1962).

Additional Sources

Loughery, John, John Sloan: painter and rebel, New York: H. Holt, 1995.

Scott, David W., John Sloan, New York: Watson-Guptill, 1975. □

Sloan, John (1871–1951). American painter and graphic artist. He was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Philadelphia, where from 1891 he worked as an illustrator on various newspapers and periodicals, particularly the Philadelphia Press. In the early 1890s he also attended classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in 1896 he began to paint seriously, influenced by Robert Henri. In 1904 he settled permanently in New York, where he and Henri were among the members of The Eight. Sloan was the most political member of the group and as well as taking his most characteristic subjects from everyday lower-class New York life, he did illustrations for socialist periodicals, including The Masses, of which he was art editor from 1912 to 1916. However, he was not interested in using his art for what he called ‘socialist propaganda', and he resigned from the magazine after a dispute over policy. Sloan's paintings of the pre-First World War period are generally solid, broadly brushed, and low-keyed in colour, typically featuring street scenes or domestic interiors; however, he could also be sharply satirical and occasionally he expressed himself in a totally different vein, as in Wake of the Ferry ( Phillips Collection, Washington, 1907), a hauntingly melancholic marine picture. After the Armory Show (1913) he broadened the scope of his work beyond urban subjects to include landscapes and nudes and his style became harder and brighter. He also made etchings throughout his career, and Bellows called him ‘the greatest living etcher'.

Sloan's ‘impact on the art scene came not only through his art but also through his quick tongue, dedication to causes, leadership of organizations, and popularity as a teacher’ ( David W. Scott in Britannica Encyclopedia of American Art, 1973). For most of the period from 1914 to 1937 he taught at the Art Students League, his students including Alexander Calder, Barnett Newman, and David Smith. He was director in 1931–2 but resigned because of the organization's unwillingness to hire foreign teachers. Sloan also taught at the art schools run by Archipenko and Luks, and from 1918 until his death he was president of the Society of Independent Artists. In 1939 he published an autobiographical-critical book, Gist of Art. The best collection of his work is in the John Sloan Trust, Wilmington, Delaware.

Sloan, John (b Lock Haven, Pa., 2 Aug. 1871; d Hanover, NH, 7 Sept. 1951). American painter and graphic artist. During the 1890s he worked as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia, and he started painting seriously in 1896, influenced by Robert Henri. In 1904 he settled permanently in New York, where he and Henri were among the members of The Eight. Sloan was the most political member of the group and, as well as taking his most characteristic subjects from everyday lower-class New York life, he did illustrations for socialist periodicals, including The Masses, of which he was art editor from 1912 to 1916. However, he was not interested in using his art for what he called ‘socialist propaganda’ and he resigned from the magazine after a dispute over policy. His paintings of the pre-First World War period are generally solid, broadly brushed, and low keyed in colour, typically featuring street scenes or domestic interiors; however, he could also be sharply satirical and occasionally he expressed himself in a totally different vein, as in Wake of the Ferry (1907, Phillips Coll., Washington), a hauntingly melancholic marine picture. After the Armory Show he broadened the scope of his work to include landscapes and nudes and his style became harder and brighter. He also made etchings throughout his career. Sloan was a popular teacher at the Art Students League and other schools. In 1939 he published an autobiographical-critical book, Gist of Art.

Sloan, John (1871–1951). American painter and graphic artist. During the 1890s he worked as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia, and he started painting seriously in 1896, influenced by Robert Henri. In 1904 he settled permanently in New York, where he and Henri were among the members of The Eight. Sloan was the most political member of the group and as well as taking his most characteristic subjects from everyday lower-class New York life, he did illustrations for socialist periodicals, including The Masses, of which he was art editor from 1912 to 1916. However, he was not interested in using his art for what he called ‘socialist propaganda’ and he resigned from the magazine after a dispute over policy. His paintings of the pre-First World War period are generally solid, broadly brushed, and low-keyed in colour, typically featuring street scenes or domestic interiors; however, he could also be sharply satirical and occasionally he expressed himself in a totally different vein, as in Wake of the Ferry (1907, Phillips Coll., Washington), a hauntingly melancholic marine picture. After the Armory Show he broadened the scope of his work to include landscapes and nudes and his style became harder and brighter. He also made etchings throughout his career. Sloan was a popular teacher at the Art Students League and other schools. In 1939 he published an autobiographical-critical book, Gist of Art.

John Sloan 1871-1951, American painter and etcher, b. Lock Haven, Pa. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and worked for 12 years as an illustrator on the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Press. In 1905 he went to New York City, where he worked as an illustrator. A member of the Eight , he was active in organizing the Society of Independent Artists and was its president from 1918. Long a popular teacher at the Art Students League of New York City, he was elected president in 1930. His scenes of city life and his nude studies are in leading museums throughout the United States. Characteristic are McSorley's Bar (Detroit Inst. of Arts); Renganeschi's, Saturday Night (Art Inst., Chicago); Wake of the Ferry (Phillips Memorial Gall., Washington, D.C.); and Nude with Nine Apples (Whitney Mus., New York City). Sloan's painting owes its distinction to a natural interest in human beings, whose life he portrayed with a directness often verging on satire. As an etcher he was equally gifted.

Bibliography: See his Gist of Art (1939); his correspondence ed. by B. St. John (1965); prints by P. Morse (1969); biographies by B. St. John (1971) and J. Loughery (1995); studies by L. Goodrich (1952), V. W. Brooks (1955), and D. W. Scott and E. J. Bullard (1971).