Sloan, John

Sloan, John, 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).

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Sloan, John (French)

(born Aug. 2, 1871, Lock Haven, Pa., U.S.—died Sept. 7, 1951, Hanover, N.H.) U.S. artist. He worked as a commercial newspaper artist in Philadelphia, where he studied with Robert Henri. He followed Henri to New York City, where in 1908 with six others they exhibited as The Eight. Sloan's realistic urban paintings gave rise to the epithet Ash Can school. Works such as Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair (1912) and Backyards, Greenwich Village (1914) are sympathetic portrayals of working men and women; occasionally he evoked a mood of romantic melancholy.

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Sloan, John (French) (1871–1951) painter, printmaker; born in Lock Haven, Pa. From 1892 he worked as an illustrator for various periodicals, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1892–93), and became an accomplished etcher beginning in 1902. He moved to New York (1902) and was one of the founders of the Eight (1908), some of whom became known as the Ashcan school for their paintings of urban life. He taught at the Art Students League (1916–38), and his paintings were bold and warmly colored, as in The City from Greenwich Village (1922). From the 1930s on he painted female nudes, such as Nude and Nine Apples (1937).

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Sloan, John 

Born Aug. 2, 1871, in Lock Haven, Pa.: died Sept. 7, 1951, in Hanover, N. H. American painter and graphic artist.

Sloan studied in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy (1892-93) and in the studio of R. Henri. In 1904 he moved to New York, where he did illustrations for magazines. From 1912 to 1916, Sloan was art editor for the socialist magazine The Masses, and in 1926 he became a contributing illustrator to The New Masses. He was a member of The Eight (formed in 1908) and a leading representative of the realistic ashcan school.

Sloan painted in a very free and spontaneous manner (Pigeons, 1910, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). His drawings and etchings show great precision and sharpness. Sloan revealed the seamy side of life in the slums and backyards of the capitalist city, sometimes with irony and a sense of the grotesque, sometimes sadly and sympathetically.

REFERENCE

Brooks, V. W. John Sloan: A Painter’s Life. New York, 1955.