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In the opening years of this century American art was dominated by an academic idealism which shunned the gigantic material growth, the great flood of immigration, the growing social conflicts and the life of the great mass of people. This genteel interlude was broken at the turn of the century by a group of realistic painters, Robert Henri, George Luks, William Glackens, Everett Shinn and John Sloan, all Philadelphians, all students of the Pennsylvania Academy and all, except Henri, originally newspaper artists. These men turned to the everyday life around them, that of the modern city, and painted it with honesty, humor and affection.
John Sloan was born in Lockhaven, Pennsylvania. He began as an assistant cashier in a book and print sellers store; three years later, he went to work for A. Edward Newton, making novelties, calendars, etchings of the homes of American poets and the like. In 1892, the Philadelphia Inquirer offered him a job in the art department where his colleagues were Shinn, Glackens and Luks. The same year he entered the night antique class at the Pennsylvania Academy under Thomas Anshutz but was more enthralled with the instruction he received at the studio of Robert Henri.
Sloan followed Henri to New York City in 1904, and within a year was producing some of his best early paintings and etchings, all centered on the bustling city environment. He continued illustrating for his livelihood, now for The Century and Collier's magazines. His diary is full of close observances of urban vignettes -- expressed with a graphic vividness like that of his drawing. From his studio window he liked to watch the life of the roofs -- women hanging up their clothes to dry, gossiping, getting a glimpse of sun and sky; tenement dwellers asleep on the roofs on a hot summer night.
But sales did not come easily, either for the paintings or etchings. After continual rejection of their work by the juries of the National Academy of Design, Society of American Artists, and even the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Sloan and other members of the Eight formed an exhibit at Macbeth Galleries in 1908 that was to turn the art world upside down. The public swarmed through the doors; critics in general praised their awareness of other aspects of the city besides Fifth Avenue seen through an impressionistic lens. Some critics were scathing, calling them "apostles of ugliness" and the "black gang," referring to their tendency to use almost monochromatic earth tones. The exhibit circulated to eight cities for more than a year. It dramatized the need for new points of view and placed the members of the Eight in positions of leadership in the battle for independent art exhibitions for many years. Their Exhibition of Independent Artists of 1910 which Sloan almost single-handedly prepared, is a landmark for non-juried, open showings in this country.
For a period around 1913, Sloan was art editor for the Masses, a liberal magazine. He contributed illustrations for nearly every issue. After the Armory Show his awareness of modernism brought subtle changes in his art. He had already freed himself from the dark palette of his early style thanks to the tutelage of Hardesty Maratta, a color theorist. Sloan's interests now were toward plastic elements -- purer painting qualities and a richer sensuousness in his palette.
Every summer from 1914 to 1918, Sloan spent at Gloucester, exploring for the first time outdoor light and color. It was still direct painting, broad and spontaneous, but with a new brilliant color sense. Pure landscape occupied him then and throughout the remainder of his career.
Sloan also made summer painting trips to Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1919 until his death, focusing again on the light and color of the locale as well as the native people of the region. He found the Southwest landscape a helpful subject in his advance toward a plastic realization of geometric formations and handsome color. The life of the Southwest affected him in the same way New York City had when he moved there fifteen years earlier. The traditional ways of the Spanish-speaking population and American Indians intrigued him and he attempted to capture the basic expressions of a culture of different from his own. Sloan painted black-clad women in the piazzas, religious processions by candlelight, old missions and cliff dwellings; the Indians of San Ildefonso, Cochiti and Santo Domingo provided magnificent portrait subjects throughout his 33 years of summer visits to Santa Fe.
Beginning in 1928, Sloan turned increasingly to figure studies and nudes, using oil glazes over tempera, overlaid with a network of red lines. The result was highly personal and not very popular with the public, who by now wanted his early work.
Sloan taught for most of his career at the Art Students League, where he was elected Director in 1931. In 1939, he published a treatise on his teaching methods and theories about painting, The Gist of Art. His work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barnes Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnegie Institute, the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum, the Detroit Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art and many others.
LB
ŠThe essay herein is the property of Spanierman Gallery and is copyrighted by Spanierman Gallery. It may not be reproduced without written permission from Spanierman Gallery nor shown or communicated to anyone without due credit being given to Spanierman Gallery.
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