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John Sloan
1871–1951
BirthplaceLock Haven, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Death placeHanover, New Hampshire, United States of America
BiographyA pioneer of urban realism, John French Sloan is best known for paintings and prints that embrace the heady diversity of modern life in New York City in the early decades of the twentieth century. Sloan spent most of his youth in Philadelphia, leaving school at the age of sixteen to help support his family. His first job, in a bookstore, gave him a lifelong passion for reading and introduced him to graphic art. Copying examples, he taught himself the printmaking technique of etching and by 1892 had begun to work as a newspaper illustrator while attending the conservative Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Along with fellow artist-reporters William Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, Sloan came under the influence of painter Robert Henri, advocate of a new American art of everyday experience that built on the achievements of European masters. While these artists traveled abroad for further study, however, Sloan remained in Philadelphia to work as a graphic artist at the Philadelphia Inquirer just as his skills were rendered obsolete by the advent of photographic newspaper illustration. When he lost his job in 1903, Sloan joined his friends in New York City.
Settling with his wife Dolly in the seedy Tenderloin District of lower Manhattan, Sloan etched and painted vignettes of ordinary life he observed on the city's streets, on rooftops, in shops and places of entertainment, and in apartment dwellings. Recognized as a talented narrative painter, he exhibited his works at the National Academy of Design, but when that conservative institution rejected paintings by other members of his circle, he joined them in an independent exhibition at Macbeth Gallery in 1908. Critics' derisive response to the stark if humorous realism of these artists prompted later writers to dub them the Ashcan school. Sloan emerged as one of its leaders, and in 1910 he helped organize the Exhibition of Independent Artists, another important breakaway show. A committed socialist, Sloan contributed illustrations to the leftist magazine The Masses but rejected socialism after learning about wartime atrocities in Europe.
Sloan helped found the Society of Independent Artists, an organization of avant-garde artists, of which he eventually served as longtime president, in 1916. That year he also joined the faculty of the Art Students League, where he would nurture several generations of important modernist artists. He had already begun to abandon his typical dark tonalities and gritty urban subjects, painting landscapes and nudes that met with greater favor from critics and buyers. Painting out-of-doors, he found many subjects in the picturesque settings of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which became his second home. By the early 1930s, when narrative imagery of the American scene was ascendant, Sloan was acknowledged as a major American painter. With the assistance of Helen Farr, a former student whom he married in 1944 after the death of his first wife, he compiled The Gist of Art (1939), which summarized his artistic philosophy. Despite failing eyesight, Sloan painted throughout the 1940s, increasingly experimenting with abstraction and new techniques.
Settling with his wife Dolly in the seedy Tenderloin District of lower Manhattan, Sloan etched and painted vignettes of ordinary life he observed on the city's streets, on rooftops, in shops and places of entertainment, and in apartment dwellings. Recognized as a talented narrative painter, he exhibited his works at the National Academy of Design, but when that conservative institution rejected paintings by other members of his circle, he joined them in an independent exhibition at Macbeth Gallery in 1908. Critics' derisive response to the stark if humorous realism of these artists prompted later writers to dub them the Ashcan school. Sloan emerged as one of its leaders, and in 1910 he helped organize the Exhibition of Independent Artists, another important breakaway show. A committed socialist, Sloan contributed illustrations to the leftist magazine The Masses but rejected socialism after learning about wartime atrocities in Europe.
Sloan helped found the Society of Independent Artists, an organization of avant-garde artists, of which he eventually served as longtime president, in 1916. That year he also joined the faculty of the Art Students League, where he would nurture several generations of important modernist artists. He had already begun to abandon his typical dark tonalities and gritty urban subjects, painting landscapes and nudes that met with greater favor from critics and buyers. Painting out-of-doors, he found many subjects in the picturesque settings of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which became his second home. By the early 1930s, when narrative imagery of the American scene was ascendant, Sloan was acknowledged as a major American painter. With the assistance of Helen Farr, a former student whom he married in 1944 after the death of his first wife, he compiled The Gist of Art (1939), which summarized his artistic philosophy. Despite failing eyesight, Sloan painted throughout the 1940s, increasingly experimenting with abstraction and new techniques.