AFA Winter 2017

2017 Antiques & Fine Art 105 Reginald Marsh, who would become known for their urban realist paintings in the 1920s and 1930s. While his students turned to city subjects, Sloan increasingly painted portraits and nudes during his months in New York each year (Fig. 10). In 1919, with Henri’s recommendation, the Sloans traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the summer. The new surroundings delighted the artist. The Sloans purchased a home in Santa Fe in 1920, and returned almost every summer thereafter. In New Mexico, Sloan depicted everyday life in town, landscapes, and Pueblo dances (Fig. 11). For his Santa Fe town scenes, Sloan worked much as he did in New York, painting local subjects from memory in his studio. Landscape paintings might be made on the spot or worked up in the studio from sketches. His images of Pueblo dances relied on memory, as sketching and photography were forbidden at ceremonial dances. The late 1920s marked a significant shift in Sloan’s painting, when he adopted a new technique in an effort to separate form and color. After 1928, Sloan delineated the major elements of his compositions in tempera on panel, and then built up color with layers of translucent oil glazes. This was a radical departure from the direct alla prima approach to painting that he had employed for the first three decades of his career. Sloan’s new method yielded extraordinary results, like the glowing flames that punctuate Procession to the Cross of the Martyrs (1930, Fig. 12). Sloan used this exacting technique primarily for por- traits and figure paintings, the main categories of his late work (Fig. 13). The artist’s second wife, Helen Farr Sloan, was the sitter for some of the finest of Sloan’s paintings after their marriage in 1944 (Fig. 14). An American Journey: The Art of John Sloan is the first major retrospective of John Sloan’s work since 1988. It explores all facets of the artist’s long career: his work as an illustrator in Philadelphia, his famous depictions of New York City, his portraits, his nudes, his lively views of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and his fascinating studies of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibition includes nearly one hundred works—drawings, prints, and paintings—produced between 1890 and 1946. The Delaware Art Museum holds the largest collection of work by the artist, as well as a rich trove of archival materials donated to the museum by the artist’s widow Helen Farr Sloan.  An American Journey is on view at the Delaware Art Museum through January 28, 2018. Heather Campbell Coyle is chief curator and curator of American art at the Delaware Art Museum. 1. Macbeth Gallery Scrapbook 3, 1902–1910, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 2. Quoted in Rowland Elzea, John Sloan’s Oil Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 41. 3. Sloan to Quinn, November 12, 1912. Quoted in Grant Holcomb, “John Sloan in Santa Fe,” American Art Journal (May 1978), 34. 4. Elzea, 215. this page top Fig. 13: John Sloan (1871–1951), Self-Portrait, Pipe and Brown Jacket, 1946. Casein tempera underpaint with oil-varnish glaze on panel, 16 × 12⅛ inches. Delaware Art Museum; Gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1986. © 2017 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. this page bottom Fig. 14: John Sloan (1871–1951), Girl’s Eye View, 1945. Oil on Masonite™, 16 × 20 inches. Delaware Art Museum; Gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1980. © 2017 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.