John Sloan
1871–1951

One of the foremost urban realists of the early twentieth century, John Sloan was captivated by the vibrant pulse of everyday working-class life. After pursuing a successful career as a commercial newspaper artist in Philadelphia, Sloan followed his friends Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and William Glackens to New York in 1904. There, he harnessed the skills he had learned from newspaper work—the ability to memorize characteristic details and sketch quickly on the street—to paint impressionistic images of squalid tenements, streets and storefronts, parks, restaurants, and bustling crowds. To critics, these commonplace subjects were inappropriate for art, but to Sloan and his circle—whose dark palette and gritty subject matter earned them the nickname the Ashcan School—they were quintessentially American.

Backyards, Greenwich Village was painted not long after Sloan relocated his studio and apartment to West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, where he immersed himself in the neighborhood’s flourishing bohemian community. Sloan especially loved to capture his subjects unawares, as in this scene of two children building a snowman in the ramshackle backyard seen from the artist’s apartment window. The pair is supervised by a nearby cat, while another young child, in turn, observes the entire scene from an upstairs window, creating an interplay of gazes that modulates the viewer’s own entry into the image. By portraying such ordinary, seemingly unremarkable moments with his exuberant brushwork and keen eye for detail, Sloan invested them with a sense of freshness and immediacy, suffused with the democratic idealism of the Progressive Era.

Introduction

John French Sloan (August 2, 1871 – September 7, 1951) was an American painter and etcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. He was also a member of the group known as The Eight. He is best known for his urban genre scenes and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often observed through his Chelsea studio window. Sloan has been called the premier artist of the Ashcan School, and also a realist painter who embraced the principles of Socialism, though he himself disassociated his art from his politics.

Wikidata identifier

Q861756

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Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed December 6, 2024.

Introduction

Comment on works: genre; landscape

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, etcher, genre artist, illustrator, lithographer, painter, teacher, writer

ULAN identifier

500014645

Names

John Sloan, sloan j.

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Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed December 6, 2024.