Fifth Avenue 1909

Well-dressed women walk toward the viewer along a crowded sidewalk in Fifth Avenue, 1909. Buildings frame the scene on either side, and the recognizable shape of Manhattan's Flatiron Building is visible in the center background. The scene depicts Fifth Avenue south of Thirty-fifth Street. In the early 20th century, Sloan often walked around New York City looking for subjects for his artworks . His composition places the viewer directly in the scene, at street level. The central figure, with head held high, wears a dark dress and hat and carries a walking stick. To the far-right a man, seen from the back, his figure extending beyond the edge of the composition, may be a stand-in for the observant artist.

Sloan made this print in Santa Fe in 1941, copying it from a published photograph of his 1909 painting entitled Fifth Avenue, New York. It is an unusual example of the artist revisiting one of his own compositions thirty years later. He considered it “the worst print I ever made.", yet it won a prize for etching at the Artists for Victory exhibition.

Figures and Forms: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 9–July 9, 2000.

Paris-New York, aller-retour. Une Modernité américaine en formation, 1875–1940. Oeuvres des collections de la Terra Foundation for the Arts et des Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens (Paris-New York, Roundtrip. American Modernism in the Making, 1875–1940. Works from the Terra Foundation for the Arts and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, September 15–November 30, 2002. [exh. cat.]

Morse, Peter. John Sloan's Prints: A Catalog Raisonné of the Etchings, Lithographs, and Posters. New Haven, Connecticut and London, England: Yale University Press, 1969. No. 308, pp. 341–42.

Rowland, Elzea. John Sloan's Oil Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonne Part One. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991. No. 153, p. 98.

Griffith, Bronwyn and Lee A. Vedder. Paris-New York, aller-retour (New York-Paris Round Trip). (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text pp. 29 (French), 90 (English); fig. 9, p. 29 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]