Thomas Sully (June 19, 1783 – November 5, 1872) was a well-known American
(English-born) painter, mostly of portraits.Thomas Sully (June 19, 1783 –
November 5, 1872) was a well-known American (English-born) painter, mostly of
portraits.
John Sloan
Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street (New York City) by John Sloan. Oil
30 x 40. 1928.
Birth name
John French Sloan
Born
August 2, 1871(1871-08-02)
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
Died
September 8, 1951 (aged 80)
Hanover, New Hampshire
Nationality
American
Field
Painting, Etching
Training
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Movement
Ashcan School
Works
McSorley's Bar, (1912), Sixth Avenue
Elevated at Third Street, (1928), Wake of the Ferry, (1907),
and HairDressers Window, (1907)
Awards
Gold Medal (1950)
John French Sloan (August 2, 1871 – September
8, 1951) was a U.S. artist. As a member of The Eight, a group of American
artists, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists.
He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence
of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window. Sloan has
been called "the premier artist of the Ashcan School who painted the
inexhaustible energy and life of New York City during the first decades of the
twentieth century",[1] and an "early twentieth-century realist painter who
embraced the principles of socialism and placed his artistic talents at the
service of those beliefs."
Biography
John Sloan was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, in 1871, to James Dixon, a
man with artistic leanings who made an unsteady income in a succession of
jobs, and Henrietta Sloan, a schoolteacher from an affluent family.[3] Sloan
grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he lived and worked until 1904,
when he moved to New York City. He and his two sisters were encouraged to draw
and paint from an early age. In the fall of 1884 he started high school at
Central High in Philadelphia, where his classmates included William Glackens
and Albert C. Barnes.
In the spring of 1888, his father experienced a mental breakdown that left him
unable to work, and Sloan became responsible, at the age of 16, for the
support of his parents and sisters. He dropped out of school in order to work
full-time as an assistant cashier at Porter and Coates, a bookstore. His
duties were light, allowing him many hours to read the books and examine the
works in the store's print department. It was there that Sloan created his
earliest surviving works, among which are pen and ink copies after Dürer and
Rembrandt. He also began making etchings, which were sold in the store for a
modest sum. In 1890, the offer of a higher salary persuaded Sloan to leave his
position to work for A. Edward Newton, a former clerk for Porter and Coates
who had opened his own stationery store. At Newton's, Sloan designed greeting
cards, calendars, and continued with his etchings. In that same year he also
attended a night drawing class at the Spring Garden Institute, which provided
him his first formal art training.
He soon left Newton's business in quest of greater freedom as a freelance
commercial artist, but this venture produced little income, leading him in
1892 to take a job in the art department at The Philadelphia Inquirer where he
worked as an illustrator. Later that same year, Sloan began taking evening
classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under the guidance of
Thomas Pollock Anshutz.[6] Among his fellow students was his old schoolmate
William Glackens.
At a Christmas party in 1892, Sloan met Robert Henri, a charismatic advocate
of artistic independence who became a mentor to him. From this point, Sloan
began painting seriously, and the two of them have been regarded as the
driving force behind the Ashcan School that helped to redefine American Art.
Towards the end of 1895, Sloan decided to leave The Philadelphia Inquirer to
work in the art department of The Philadelphia Press. His schedule was now
less rigid, allowing him more time to paint. Henri offered encouragement, and
often sent Sloan reproductions of European artists, such as Manet, Hals, Goya
and Velázquez.
Career
In 1898, the socially awkward Sloan was introduced to Anna Maria (Dolly) Wall,
and the two fell immediately in love. In entering into a relationship with
her, Sloan accepted the challenges posed by her alcoholism and her sexual
history which included prostitution—although Dolly worked in department store
by day, Sloan met her in a brothel. The two were married on August 5, 1901,
providing Sloan with an affectionate partner who believed in him absolutely,
but whose lapses and mental instability led to frequent crises.
By 1903 he had produced about sixty oil paintings in total. In April 1904,
Sloan moved to New York City, and soon found quarters in Greenwich Village
where he painted some of his best-known works, including McSorley's Bar, Sixth
Avenue Elevated at Third Street, and Wake of the Ferry. His time in New York
was his most prolific period, but he sold little, and he continued to rely on
his earnings as a freelancer for The Philadelphia Press, for which he
continued to draw weekly puzzles until 1910. By 1905 he was supplementing this
income by drawing illustrations for books (including The Moonstone) and for
such journals as Collier's Weekly, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Weekly, The
Saturday Evening Post, and Scribner's.
A doctor who was consulted in an effort to help Dolly overcome her drinking
problem suggested a scheme to Sloan: he was to start a diary in which he would
include his fondest thoughts of her, with the expectation that she would
surreptitiously read it and be freed of her disabling fear that Sloan would
leave her. Spanning the period from 1906 to early 1913, the diary soon grew
beyond its initial purpose, and its publication in 1965 supplied researchers
with a detailed chronicle of Sloan's activities and interests.
Sloan's growing discontent with what he called "the Plutocracy's government"
led him to join the Socialist party in 1910. He became the art editor of The
Masses with the December 1912 issue,[14] and contributed drawings to other
socialist publications such as the Call and Coming Nation. As Sloan disliked
propaganda, his work for these magazines often lacked overt political content.
This was unacceptable to a faction of his fellow editors at The Masses,
causing him to resign his position with the journal in 1916. He later became
disenchanted with the Communist Party in America, although he remained hopeful
that the Soviet Union would succeed in creating an egalitarian society.
In 1913, Sloan participated in the Armory Show. He served as a member of the
committee that organized it, and also exhibited two paintings and five
etchings.[16] In that same year, the important collector Albert C. Barnes
purchased one of Sloan's paintings; this was only the fourth sale of a
painting for Sloan (although it has often erroneously been counted as his
first).[17] For Sloan, exposure to the European modernist works on view in the
Armory Show initiated a gradual move away from the urban themes he had been
painting for the previous ten years.[18] In 1914–15, during summers spent in
Gloucester, Massachusetts, he painted landscapes outdoors in a new, more
colorful style influenced by Van Gogh and the Fauves.[19]
Beginning in 1914, Sloan taught at the Art Students League, continuing for
about ten years. Sloan also taught briefly at the George Luks Art School. His
students respected him for his practical knowledge and integrity, but feared
his caustic tongue; as a well-known painter who had nonetheless sold very few
paintings, he advised his students, "I have nothing to teach you that will
help you to make a living".
The summer of 1918 was the last he spent in Gloucester. For the next 30 years,
he spent four months each summer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the desert
landscape inspired a new concentration on the rendering of form. Still, the
majority of his works were completed in New York.[21] He developed a strong
interest in Native American arts and ceremonies, and became an advocate of
Indian artists.[22] He also championed the work of Diego Rivera, who he called
"the one artist on this continent who is in the class of the old masters."[23]
The Society of Independent Artists, which Sloan had co-founded in 1916, gave
Rivera and José Clemente Orozco their first showing in the United States in
1920.
In 1943, his wife, Dolly, died of coronary heart disease. The next year, Sloan
married Helen Farr, who is responsible for most of the preservation of his
works. On September 8, 1951 John Sloan died of cancer in Hanover, New
Hampshire.
Training
John Sloan's training consisted of his study and reproduction of works by
painters such as Rembrandt, a few classes at various institutions, mentorship
by Robert Henri, and his work experience as an etcher and draughtsman. It is
recorded that the high school that Sloan attended had a good art department,
but it is not known whether he gained any training there. Sloan worked several
jobs in draughtsmanship, etching, and making commercial artwork before he
attended The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under
Thomas Pollock Anshutz. The experience Sloan gathered from his various press
jobs provided him with a certain amount of knowledge and allowed room for him
to explore and expand in his free time. Henri's mentorship was significant in
Sloan's training because he encouraged him to paint more, and introduced him
to the work of various artists, whose techniques, composition, and style Sloan
studied. He sought additional guidance from Ruskin's The Elements of Drawing
and John Collier's A Manual of Oil Painting. Sloan believed his study and
mentorship at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, as well as his early
Philadelphia experiences, to be his "college education."
Early influences
At a young age Sloan had been exposed to numerous books and reproductions
through his uncle, Alexander Priestley, who held an extensive collection in
his library. One major influence that he discovered was John Leech, an English
caricaturist. When Sloan entered his position at The Philadelphia Press his
newspaper drawings reflected the style of Leech, Charles Keene, and George du
Maurier. But in 1894 he had begun attracting attention with decorative
illustrations in a new style related to the poster movement; these works
combine the influences of European artists of the late 19th and early 20th
century, including Walter Crane, and reveal Sloan's study of Botticelli and
Japanese prints.
Sloan's early paintings may have been influenced by Thomas Eakins as a result
of his time studying under Anshutz at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts. In 1893, Sloan and Glackens became regulars at a weekly "open house" at
Henri's studio, where he led discussions of such books as George Moore's
Modern Painting and William Morris Hunt's Talks on Art. "Both Eakins and Moore
emphasized the importance of life in art, one of the ideas Henri is credited
with having passed on to the young newspaper artists."
Style & The Ashcan School
He was a member of The Eight, a group of American realist artists that
included Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, Maurice
Prendergast, George Luks, and William Glackens. The Eight are closely
identified with the Ashcan School, although Sloan despised this term.[27]
Unlike Henri, Sloan was not a facile painter, and labored over his
work—leading Henri to remark that "Sloan" was "the past participle of
'slow'".[28] When Glackens and Sloan were at the The Philadelphia Inquirer,
Glackens usually got the reportorial assignments because he was more adept
than Sloan in making quick sketches.[6] His slow and methodical approach
towards sketching carried over to his painting. "Sloan's approach to making
urban realist art was based on images seen and remembered (and sometimes
written down) rather than sketched in the street, even though his autographic
handling of paint and print media conveys the look of a rapid drawing. The
effect is conceptual rather than perceptual, which Sloan denigrated as
"eyesight" painting." This was a major characteristic of his style, consistent
with the Ashcan School's goal of presenting a subject to the viewer with all
the immediacy of a snapshot.
Sloan tended to observe city life and dwellers interacting in an intimate
setting as they interact. He "concerned himself with what we call genre:
street scenes, restaurant life, paintings of saloons, ferry boats, roof tops,
back yards, and so on through a whole catalogue of commonplace subjects."[30]
Like Edward Hopper, Sloan often used the perspective of the window in his
painting, in order to focus closely, but also in order to observe the subject
undetected. He wrote in his diary, in 1911 ; "I am in the habit of watching
every bit of human life I can see about my windows, but I do it so that I am
not observed at it ... No insult to the people you are watching to do so
unseen." Sloan's attention to isolated incidents within the urban environment
recalls the narrative techniques used in the realist fiction and Hollywood
films he enjoyed.
Whenever Sloan was asked about the social context of his paintings or about
his association with Socialism, he said that they were done with "sympathy,
but no social consciousness."[2] "I was never interested in putting propaganda
into my paintings, so it annoys me when art historians try to interpret my
city life pictures as 'socially conscious.' I saw the everyday life of the
people, and on the whole I picked out bits of joy in human life for my subject
matter."[2] In the late 1920s, Sloan changed his technique, and abandoned his
characteristic urban subject matter in favor of nudes and portraits. Rejecting
as superficial the spontaneous, painterly technique of such artists as Manet
and Hals—and also of Henri and his followers among The Eight—he turned instead
to the underpainting and glazing method used by old masters such as Andrea
Mantegna. The resulting paintings, which often made unconventional use of
superimposed hatchings to define the forms, have never attained the popularity
of his early Ashcan works.
Legacy
Among John Sloan's best-known paintings are Hairdresser's Window (1907,
private collection), The Picnic Ground (1907), in the Whitney Museum of American
Art, The Haymarket (1907), in The Brooklyn Museum, and McSorley's Bar (1912). In
1971, his painting Wake of the Ferry (1907, in The Phillips Collection,
Washington, D.C.) was reproduced on a US postage stamp honoring Sloan.
His students included Alexander Calder, Reginald Marsh, Peggy Bacon, Aaron
Bohrod, Barnett Newman, and Norman Raeben. In 1939 he published a book of his
teachings, Gist of Art.
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