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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. Roofs, Summer Night, from 1906, depicts just the sort of scene Sloan might have observed from his apartment window. The print depicts the practice, in the summertime, of dragging mattresses up to the roof to escape stifling tenement apartments. In the image, several people have crowded onto the rooftop. In the foreground, a man and woman, presumably husband and wife, lie side by side with their two children sleeping nearby. The woman is covered by a sheet, but her cheek and neck are exposed and the strap of her nightgown has slipped off her shoulder. In the background, other sleeping forms are scattered across the rooftop, stretching into the distance. Laundry hangs on a line above the sleeping figures. As with several other etchings in this series, there is an erotic charge to this image. At right, a man stretches out with his head resting on his forearms, but he is not asleep. Instead, he gazes intently at the full figure of the woman in the foreground. Given her position, with her face angled away from the viewer, it is difficult to tell if she is asleep or if perhaps she returns his fixed stare. This ambiguous detail lends the image a disconcerting quality. Is Sloan showing us a man leering creepily at a sleeping woman, or two covert lovers caught in a moment of silent communication?
It is impossible to tell. Sloan later described the subject rather innocuously, writing, “I have always liked to watch the people in the summer, especially the way they live on the roofs. For many years I have not seen the summer life of the city, which has perhaps been better for my health than my production of city-life etchings. ... The city seems more human in the summer.” [2]
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, 10.
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
Roofs, Summer Night
Artist
John Sloan
(1871 - 1951)
Date1906
Mediumetching
DimensionsFrame: 16 1/4 x 18 in. (41.3 x 45.7 cm)
Image (plate): 5 1/8 x 7 in. (13 x 17.8 cm)
SignedJohn Sloan
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright© 2021 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number1976.2.4
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. Roofs, Summer Night, from 1906, depicts just the sort of scene Sloan might have observed from his apartment window. The print depicts the practice, in the summertime, of dragging mattresses up to the roof to escape stifling tenement apartments. In the image, several people have crowded onto the rooftop. In the foreground, a man and woman, presumably husband and wife, lie side by side with their two children sleeping nearby. The woman is covered by a sheet, but her cheek and neck are exposed and the strap of her nightgown has slipped off her shoulder. In the background, other sleeping forms are scattered across the rooftop, stretching into the distance. Laundry hangs on a line above the sleeping figures. As with several other etchings in this series, there is an erotic charge to this image. At right, a man stretches out with his head resting on his forearms, but he is not asleep. Instead, he gazes intently at the full figure of the woman in the foreground. Given her position, with her face angled away from the viewer, it is difficult to tell if she is asleep or if perhaps she returns his fixed stare. This ambiguous detail lends the image a disconcerting quality. Is Sloan showing us a man leering creepily at a sleeping woman, or two covert lovers caught in a moment of silent communication?
It is impossible to tell. Sloan later described the subject rather innocuously, writing, “I have always liked to watch the people in the summer, especially the way they live on the roofs. For many years I have not seen the summer life of the city, which has perhaps been better for my health than my production of city-life etchings. ... The city seems more human in the summer.” [2]
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, 10.
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 viewCollections