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As I walked the streets with my portfolio of samples, going from one publisher to another, I saw the life of the city really for the first time. All those years on the newspapers [in Philadelphia], I had worked most of the day and evening. I had neither time nor reason to see the neighborhood life of the city. Coming to New York and finding a place to live where I could observe the backyards and rooftops behind our attic studio—it was a new and exciting experience. Work on the de Kock illustrations [a series of illustrations for a deluxe edition of fifty novels by the French author Paul de Kock], although of a completely different place and period, had fired my creative imagination and had increased the technical skill in handling the etching needle. … New York had its human comedy and I felt like making pictures of this everyday world. At first I had some idea of social commentary based on Hogarth’s morality series or Daumier’s dramatis personae. But I found that this was not the kind of motivation which was most valid for my own personality and talent. … I saw neighborhoods of the city, and saw the kind of people who lived, worked and played in the Chelsea district, the Tenderloin around Sixth Avenue, then Fifth Avenue, the parks, etc. On the whole, when finding incidents that provided ideas for paintings, I was selecting bits of joy in human life. [1]
The New York City Life series included thirteen etchings in all. Sloan completed the first ten between 1905 and 1906 and added three more between 1910 and 1911. As a set, they demonstrate Sloan’s ability to narrate anecdotal aspects of urban life. The Picture Buyer, from 1911, is one of two etchings satirizing the art market. The other, to which Sloan gave the ironic title Connoisseurs of Prints, 1905, showed a portly and pompous man loudly critiquing a gallery exhibition. In The Picture Buyer, Sloan captured a scene at Macbeth Galleries, the gallery where the group known as the Eight had staged their defiant exhibition in 1908. The print shows a distinguished elderly gentleman seated before a painting while a gallery assistant stands ready to remove the first painting and show him another. A second man, presumably the gallery owner, stands behind the picture buyer, inclining towards him slightly as if to impart some interesting detail about the piece. The transaction has attracted the attention of several figures at left who pause to see the outcome of the exchange. The potential customer’s haughty expression reveals nothing. Sloan’s inscription on a proof of this etching, however, suggests that his sympathies lay with the customer rather than the seller: “An incident in the galleries of William Macbeth—he is shown purring in the ear of a victim.” [2] Given Sloan’s often-precarious financial situation, he likely had as much contempt for the gallery owners as for the picture buyers.
Notes:
[1] John Sloan, quoted in Helen Farr Sloan, ed. John Sloan: New York Etchings (1905–1949) (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1978), vii–viii.
[2] Sloan, quoted in Sloan, John Sloan, 17.
ProvenanceFrom 1976
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse in 1976 [1]
Notes:
[1] Reynolda House Annual Report, 1976-1977. See also memorandum of ownership by B. Millhouse, c. 1983, object file.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
2018
John Sloan: New York Etchings
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (6/12/2018-11/25/2018)
Published References
DepartmentAmerican Art
The Picture Buyer
Artist
John Sloan
(1871 - 1951)
Date1911
Mediumetching
DimensionsFrame: 16 1/4 x 18 in. (41.3 x 45.7 cm)
Image (plate): 5 1/4 x 6 7/8 in. (13.3 x 17.5 cm)
SignedJohn Sloan
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright© 2021 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number1976.2.3
DescriptionIn 1904, John Sloan married Anna “Dolly” Wall and the couple moved from Philadelphia to New York, settling in Chelsea. The neighborhood had a shabby bohemian quality that appealed to them. According to Sloan’s second wife, Helen Farr Sloan, the artist first conceived of the etching series called New York City Life as he pounded the pavement in search of illustration work in Manhattan. The artist later recalled:As I walked the streets with my portfolio of samples, going from one publisher to another, I saw the life of the city really for the first time. All those years on the newspapers [in Philadelphia], I had worked most of the day and evening. I had neither time nor reason to see the neighborhood life of the city. Coming to New York and finding a place to live where I could observe the backyards and rooftops behind our attic studio—it was a new and exciting experience. Work on the de Kock illustrations [a series of illustrations for a deluxe edition of fifty novels by the French author Paul de Kock], although of a completely different place and period, had fired my creative imagination and had increased the technical skill in handling the etching needle. … New York had its human comedy and I felt like making pictures of this everyday world. At first I had some idea of social commentary based on Hogarth’s morality series or Daumier’s dramatis personae. But I found that this was not the kind of motivation which was most valid for my own personality and talent. … I saw neighborhoods of the city, and saw the kind of people who lived, worked and played in the Chelsea district, the Tenderloin around Sixth Avenue, then Fifth Avenue, the parks, etc. On the whole, when finding incidents that provided ideas for paintings, I was selecting bits of joy in human life. [1]
The New York City Life series included thirteen etchings in all. Sloan completed the first ten between 1905 and 1906 and added three more between 1910 and 1911. As a set, they demonstrate Sloan’s ability to narrate anecdotal aspects of urban life. The Picture Buyer, from 1911, is one of two etchings satirizing the art market. The other, to which Sloan gave the ironic title Connoisseurs of Prints, 1905, showed a portly and pompous man loudly critiquing a gallery exhibition. In The Picture Buyer, Sloan captured a scene at Macbeth Galleries, the gallery where the group known as the Eight had staged their defiant exhibition in 1908. The print shows a distinguished elderly gentleman seated before a painting while a gallery assistant stands ready to remove the first painting and show him another. A second man, presumably the gallery owner, stands behind the picture buyer, inclining towards him slightly as if to impart some interesting detail about the piece. The transaction has attracted the attention of several figures at left who pause to see the outcome of the exchange. The potential customer’s haughty expression reveals nothing. Sloan’s inscription on a proof of this etching, however, suggests that his sympathies lay with the customer rather than the seller: “An incident in the galleries of William Macbeth—he is shown purring in the ear of a victim.” [2] Given Sloan’s often-precarious financial situation, he likely had as much contempt for the gallery owners as for the picture buyers.
Notes:
[1] John Sloan, quoted in Helen Farr Sloan, ed. John Sloan: New York Etchings (1905–1949) (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1978), vii–viii.
[2] Sloan, quoted in Sloan, John Sloan, 17.
ProvenanceFrom 1976
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse in 1976 [1]
Notes:
[1] Reynolda House Annual Report, 1976-1977. See also memorandum of ownership by B. Millhouse, c. 1983, object file.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
2018
John Sloan: New York Etchings
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (6/12/2018-11/25/2018)
Published References
Status
Not on viewJuly 9, 1980