Collection
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Music
-
» Text List 
» Image & Label » Description record 7 of 212
 View larger image View zoomable image 
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):
Periods and Styles: The Ashcan School & Urban RealismThemes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Poetry
Exhibitions: 4 x 4
Exhibitions: Currents/Crosscurrents
Themes: Gender
Exhibitions: Learning to Look: The Addison at 90
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Music
Object Information
John Sloan described his 1912 painting, <i>Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair</i>, as “another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street.” Sloan’s penchant for depicting the urban life of New York City was one he shared with fellow artists, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and George Luks, all of whom started their careers as newspaper artists in Philadelphia. It was there that they studied with Robert Henri who urged them to depict everyday life as they experienced it directly and without idealization. This focus led critics to dub these artists the Ashcan Painters.
Based on observations made on walks through the city or spied through his Greenwich Village apartment windows which he committed to memory or caught in occasional quick sketches, Sloan’s vibrant, energized scenes were celebrations of the inhabitants and everyday events of his adopted New York City.
<b><i>Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years</i> - Catalogue Entry </b>
John Sloan's diary for 10 May 1912 describes his move into an eleventh-floor studio at 35 Sixth Avenue at West 4th Street, overlooking Cornelia Street in New York City. In the previous eight years, since coming to New York from Philadelphia where he had earned his living as a newspaper artist, he had worked in a room in the apartments in which he and his wife, Dolly, had lived. His primary purpose in taking a separate and larger studio was to give him enough space to paint from the figure, a subject that would engage him from time to time throughout his career. It also provided him, however, with a vantage point from which he could continue the study of urban life; this, in addition to portraiture, had been the main focus of his work since the 1890s, in painting and graphic art as well as in the book and magazine illustrations from which he made his living until he began to teach in 1916.
Sloan's penchant for city life as a subject derived from his contact with the painter and teacher Robert Henri, whom he met in 1892 in Philadelphia. Henri urged Sloan and his fellow newspaper artists, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and George Luks, to become painters and to depict everyday life as they experienced it, directly and without compromise, rejecting the idealizations of the academic and Impressionist artists then in vogue. This rejection was part of a larger debate current in the art world as to whether a distinctively American art should be developed, as Henri and others maintained, or European prototypes followed as the academics and Impressionists held. The success of the Henri-led exhibition of The Eight in 1908 and the Independent Artists Exhibition of 1910, in both of which Sloan participated, seemed to insure the victory of the former until the tables were turned by the European modernist works shown in the International Exhibition of Modem Art in New York, known as the Armory Show, in 1913.
Sloan had found his slice-of-life subject matter by walks through the city and observation from his apartment windows, working from memory or occasional quick sketches rather from the scene itself. This was the process used in painting <i>Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair</i>, about which he wrote in his book, <i>Gist of Art</i>, in 1939: "Another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street." Unfortunately, on 25 June 1912, Sloan stopped keeping the diary in which he had faithfully recorded the progress of his work since 1906; there is thus no detailed account of the creation of <i>Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair</i>, which must have been painted not long after, to judge from the light summer clothes that the women wear. It is reasonable, however, to assume that it followed a course similar to the creation of his earlier genre pictures: a day or two of the idea lying fallow in his mind, followed by a few days of relatively effortless execution of the fully developed mental image. His painting process was greatly aided by a system of using color that he had adopted in 1909. This had been developed by the artist Hardesty G. Maratta and was enthusiastically accepted by Henri, George Bellows, Sloan, and other painters of the Henri circle. The system went through many permutations both at the hands of its creator as well as its users over the years. Briefly stated, however, it involved a group of colors determined and mixed before the artist began to paint, called a "set" palette, which included the three colors that were to be dominant in the composition. This set palette employed Maratta's specially prepared paints, which packaged pure primary and secondary colors and the grayed hues thereof. The three dominant colors, called a "triad," were plotted on a diagram and were the only colors that could be used at full strength. Colors on the diagram falling outside the triangle formed by the triad were used either not at all or only as grayed hues. The triad used in <i>Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair</i> was yellow-orange, green, and purple, which appear in the hair, skirt, and bricks respectively. Full-intensity reds and blues were thus forbidden by the system but appear as neutralized hues in the blouse of one of the women and in the skin tones.
In addition to figure studies, Sloan painted several other rooftop pictures in the next few months: another group of three women, <i>Roof Gossips</i> (Arizona State University, Tempe); a woman hanging out wash, <i>Red Kimono on the Roof</i> (Indianapolis Museum of Art); and two cityscapes—<i>Rain, Roof Tops</i> (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) and <i>Rainbow, New York City</i> (Cheekwood Museum of Art). However, the lessons learned from the European modernist painters he saw early in 1913 in the Armory Show—primarily works by Lautrec, Matisse, and van Gogh—would soon lead him away from the relative innocence of his genre painting to a more sophisticated approach. There is a certain piquancy in the fact that Sloan selected <i>Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair</i> as one of his exhibits in the Armory Show—marking the end of one phase of his career and the beginning of another.
Rowland Elzea, <i>Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years, A Selective Catalogue</i> (Andover, Massachusetts: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1996), pp. 468-69; revised by Kelley Tialiou, Charles H. Sawyer Curatorial Assistant | Librarian | Archivist
Exhibition History
This object was included in the following exhibitions:
Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art), Association of American Painters and Sculptors, 2/17/1913 - 4/16/1913The Eleventh Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 10/28/1928 - 12/9/1928
Masterpieces of the Month, Connecticut College, 1/3/1944 - 3/30/1944
Pictures for Peace: A Retrospective Exhibition Organized from the Armory Show of, The Cincinnati Art Museum, 3/18/1944 - 4/16/1944
Artists of the Philadelphia Press: William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn,, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 10/14/1945 - 11/18/1945
BSO Exhibition, Boston Symphony Orchestra, 3/22/1946 - 4/6/1946
Paintings by John Sloan, American Federation of Arts, 6/15/1948 - 6/26/1949
Campus Taste in Art [Student Taste in Art], Addison Gallery of American Art, 2/16/1951 - 3/12/1951
John Sloan, 1871-1951, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1/10/1952 - 6/8/1952
An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Commemorating the Armory Show of 1913 an, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 12/2/1955 - 12/30/1955
Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Walt Kuhn and John Sloan, The Arts Club of Chicago, 5/3/1956 - 6/14/1956
Scope in Collecting [25th Anniversary Exhibition], Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/19/1956 - 12/24/1956
25th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1/13/1957 - 4/30/1957
The 1913 Armory Show in Retrospect, Mead Art Museum, 2/17/1958 - 3/17/1958
The Life and Times of John Sloan, The Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, 9/22/1961 - 10/29/1961
Paintings by John Sloan, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 11/19/1961 - 12/23/1961
The Art of John Sloan, 1871 - 1951, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1/20/1962 - 2/28/1962
1913 Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, 2/17/1963 - 4/28/1963
The Eight: Fifty-five Years Later, Southern Vermont Art Center, 6/22/1963 - 7/21/1963
Connecticut College Exhibition, Connecticut College, 9/15/1963 - 9/29/1963
200 Years of American Painting, City Art Museum of St. Louis, 4/1/1964 - 5/31/1964
America...America, Temple Beth El Art Festival, 4/25/1965 - 4/30/1965
American Painting from 1830, Everson Art Museum, 12/3/1965 - 1/16/1966
The Works, Addison Gallery of American Art, 11/7/1969 - 2/22/1970
The American Scene 1900-1970; an exhibition of twentieth century painting held , Indiana University Art Museum, 4/5/1970 - 5/17/1970
What is American in American Art, M. Knoedler and Co., Inc., 2/8/1971 - 3/6/1971
John Sloan 1871-1951, National Gallery of Art, 7/13/1971 - 8/13/1972
American Prophets [In search of the present: the American prophets ], The Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 2/22/1973 - 3/25/1973
The Split-Up: The Beginning of a New Art in America, Addison Gallery of American Art, 3/13/1981 - 4/12/1981
Masterworks from the Collection: 50th Anniversary Exhibition, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/9/1981 - 6/14/1981
John Sloan: Paintings, Prints, Drawings, Hood Museum of Art, 10/2/1981 - 1/2/1983
Masterworks of American Art from the Addison Gallery Collection, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Inc., 10/6/1981 - 10/31/1981
Dissent: The Issue of Modern Art in Boston, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2/18/1986 - 4/20/1986
At Work and Play: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/15/1987 - 7/31/1987
Raymond Saunders: Addison Delectations, Addison Gallery of American Art, 2/19/1988 - 3/20/1988
Faculty Choice Show: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Photographs and Sculpture from, Addison Gallery of American Art, 7/5/1988 - 7/31/1988
Boys and Girls, Men and Women, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/12/1990 - 6/10/1990
American Masterworks, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/5/1990 - 12/16/1990
The American City, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/18/1991 - 3/10/1991
Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/21/1994 - 4/3/1994
American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5/2/1994 - 5/14/1995
Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/5/1995 - 12/17/1995
Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/13/1996 - 7/31/1996
America: the New World in 19th-century Painting, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, 3/17/1999 - 6/20/1999
Parallel Perspectives: Early Twentieth Century American Art, Addison Gallery of American Art, 11/16/1999 - 5/1/2000
Inside and Out: Scenes of American Life from the Addison Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/26/2000 - 12/31/2000
Foundations: Building the Addison Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/12/2001 - 4/1/2001
Explorations: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints in the Addison, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/4/2001 - 1/13/2002
Figure/Space: Selected Works from the Addison, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/3/2002 - 12/29/2002
Hair: Untangling a Social History, The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, 1/31/2004 - 6/6/204
Eye on the Collection: Copley to Hopper, Addison Gallery of American Art, 12/21/2004 - 6/12/2005
Eye on the Collection: West to Hopper, Addison Gallery of American Art, 6/17/2005 - 10/16/2005
Toward Abstraction, Addison Gallery of American Art, 12/23/2005 - 3/26/2006
Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s, American Federation of Arts, 9/9/2006 - 9/7/2009
Mix and Match: A Conversation between Paintings and Works on Paper, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/23/2007 - 4/8/2007
So Long, Farewell, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/7/2007 - 7/31/2007
American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/12/2009 - 1/24/2010
Inside, Outside, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Addison Anew, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/7/2010 - 3/27/2011
Muse [Phillips Academy Art 300], Addison Gallery of American Art, 3/8/2011 - 3/27/2011
80 @ 80 , Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/15/2011 - 12/31/2011
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/19/2013 - 3/10/2013
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/27/2013 - 7/31/2013
The Armory Show at 100, New-York Historical Society, 10/11/2013 - 2/23/2014
Exterior Spaces, Interior Places, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/2/2014 - 1/4/2015
Searching for the Real, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/30/2015 - 7/31/2015
Selections from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/12/2015 - 3/13/2016
Selections from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/30/2016 - 7/31/2016
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2016 - 3/19/2017
4 x 4, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2018 - 7/31/2019
From the Rooftops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space, Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, 2/5/2019 - 9/15/2019
Currents/Crosscurrents: American Art, 1850–1950, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/16/2020 - 3/7/2021
Learning to Look: The Addison at 90, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/8/2021 - 2/6/2022
Your current search criteria is: Portfolio is "Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Music"