John Sloan
John Sloan
1871 - 1951
American painter, printmaker and draughtsman. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with Thomas Pollock Anshutz from 1892 to 1894 and worked as a commercial artist, first with the newspaper the Philadelphia Inquirer (1892–5) and then the Philadelphia Press (1895–1903). He first gained national recognition for his illustrations in the turn-of-the-century poster style, for example Atlantic City Beach (Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 Aug 1894). He earned his living through magazine illustrations until 1916.
Through his association with Robert Henri and the group of young Philadelphia artists around him, Sloan began c. 1897 to paint in oil and became interested in depicting city life. In 1904, he followed Henri to New York, where he stayed for the rest of his life. In 1908, he participated with seven other artists in an exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery to protest the conservative taste of the National Academy of Design. The group was dubbed The Eight (see EIGHT, THE (II)), and several of the artists became known as Ashcan painters (see ASHCAN SCHOOL) because of their fondness for depicting the seamier side of urban life. At this time Sloan’s paintings were archetypal Ashcan images: genre scenes of lower-class neighbourhoods in New York, painted thickly in a dark or at least strong palette, as in the Hairdresser’s Window (1907; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum; for illustration see ASHCAN SCHOOL). Sloan avoided all sentimentality in his ‘slices of life’, often infusing a light humour into vignettes of crowds, people entering bars (e.g. Haymarket, 1907; New York, Brooklyn Mus.) and playing in parks, or young women at their toilet. His paintings were never intended as social criticism although he was a socialist. Sloan’s only use of art for critical purposes was during his short period as art editor of the radical journal the Masses (1912–16) and can be seen in Ludlow, Colorado (cover, June 1914).
After the Armory Show (1913), Sloan began to focus on formal issues rather than subject-matter. Fascinated by colour theories, Sloan began applying the colour system created by Hardesty Maratta (1864–1924) in the landscapes and town views that he created from 1914 to 1918, such as Gloucester Trolley (1917; Canajoharie, NY, Lib. & A.G.), while spending his summers in Gloucester, MA. In 1919, he began visiting New Mexico, one of the earliest American artists to appreciate the area. He painted the landscape of the Southwest and genre scenes of tourists and Indian life. His preoccupation with formal issues led him to focus from the late 1920s on the nude and to develop a technique of linear hatching in overglazes that he believed gave substance to his painted forms, for example in Nude and Nine Apples (1937; New York, Whitney). Sloan is also renowned as a printmaker and was a master draughtsman. His etchings (see ), for example, which date from 1888 to 1949 (e.g. the New York City Life series, 1904), relate thematically to his paintings and influenced his late, linear painting style.
Sloan’s reputation grew substantially after World War I. He was an important force in encouraging the development of art in the USA, and he taught at the Art Students League in New York from 1916 to 1932. His teachings were published as Gist of Art (New York, 1939). Sloan also served from 1918 as President of the SOCIETY OF INDEPENDENT ARTISTS, and in 1931–3 he organized the touring Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts (see NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN ART, §XVIII and NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN ART, §XX). [Ilene Susan Fort. "Sloan, John." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T079198.]
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