Copyist at the Metropolitan Museum

John Sloan's Copyist at the Metropolitan Museum shows a crowded gallery at New York's famed museum. On the left, the artist himself appears, accompanied by his petite wife, the subject of his later etching Dolly (TF C1983.3). As the pair walk away with a backward glance, a small crowd clusters around a woman artist, dressed in white, who dabs at her palette with a paint brush as she scrutinizes the painting she is copying, a scene of a shepherd and his flock. At the center of the image, where elegantly attired adults politely gaze, a young girl ventures in for a closer look while still holding her chaperone's hand. On the right, a youth curiously examines the copy on the easel while his young sister stands on tiptoe to inspect the artist's palette. The copyist's activity and accoutrements clearly generate more interest among the museum-goers than the sanctioned original works on its walls. Sloan rendered this scene with a dense, almost chaotic complex of lines, creating the darkest areas by means of dense parallel hatching and cross-hatching. He had earlier honed his distinctive graphic skill and keen insight into human behavior as an artist-reporter for Philadelphia newspapers.

   Sloan made this print the same year that he first exhibited with The Eight, a group of American artists who as a group pursued artistic independence from the National Academy of Design. The majority of its artists, including Sloan, shunned the genteel subjects of traditional academic practice in favor of scenes of ordinary urban life. Sloan, who disdained copyists, advocated making art based on observations of everyday human activity. In this anecdotal image replete with amusing detail, he hints that copyists and their admirers are like a flock of sheep. His choice of a female copyist seems intended to refer to the flood of women amateur painters who filled American art schools at the turn of the twentieth century. When Sloan himself became a teacher, at the progressive Art Students League beginning in 1916, he emphasized an individual approach to art-making and subjects drawn from modern experience.

L'Amérique et les Modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Morse, Peter. John Sloan's Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Etchings, Lithographs, and Posters. New Haven, Connecticut and London, England: Yale University Press, 1969. No. 148, pp. 167–71.

Jacobowitz, Ellen S. and George H. Marcus. American Graphics 1860–1940: Selected from the Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982. No. 21, p. 23. [Note: The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses the most important collection of Sloan prints, including preparatory drawings, early and proof states.]

Kraft, James. John Sloan, A Printmaker. (exh. cat., International Exhibitions Foundation). Washington, D.C.: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1984. No. 29.

American Printmakers, 1860–1950. Chicago, Illinois: R. S. Johnson Fine Art, 1987. No. 21, pp. 40–41.

Hults, Linda C. The Print in the Western World: An Introductory History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Text p. 729; fig. 12.31, p. 730.

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 10, 61; fig. 2, p. 10 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 10, 61; fig. 2, p. 10 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]