John Sloan

Trained as a journalist, the young Sloan explored social issues more vigorously than most of the painters of his time, portraying working-class urbanites engaged in ordinary activities. He observed this particular scene through a rear window of his Manhattan apartment. Perched on a narrow fire escape, a woman hangs fresh laundry to dry on clotheslines strung between tenements. As evidenced by the painting, the labors of American women at the turn of the 1900s were most often confined to the domestic realm.

Year in Review (1964). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 1964-January 31, 1965).

Year in Review (1964)

American Cities: The Artist's View. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 17, 1989-January 7, 1990).

American Cities: The Artist's View

Group Exhibition. MacDowell Club, New York, NY (17-29 April 1913); see Elzea, pp. 116 and 449.

Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Etchings by John Sloan. Kraushaar Galleries, New York, NY (19 March-7 April 1917); no. 11.

Exhibition of Paintings by George Luks, Augustus Vincent Tack and John Sloan. Wisconsin Art Institute, Milwaukee, WI (March 1918).

Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by Members of the Club. Whitney Studio Club, New York, NY (20 March-20 April 1921).

Sculpture, Painting, and Crafts by Greenwich Village Artists. Greenwich House, New York, NY (24 April-2 May 1922); no. 50; see Elzea's publication.

120th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (8 February-29 March 1925); no. 236.

Annual Exhibition of Recent American Paintings. Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (13 October-9 November 1925); no. 23.

John Sloan: Paintings, Etchings, and Drawings. Wanamaker Galleries, New York, NY (4 November-? December 1939); traveled to Wanamaker Galleries, Philadelphia, PA (8-29 January 1940); no. 41.

Then and Now. Park Avenue Gallery, New York, NY (7-19 October 1940); see Elzea's publication.

John Sloan. Martha White Memorial Gallery, Santa Fe, NM (15-29 August 1942); see Elzea's publication.

30th Annual Exhibition: Painters and Sculptors of the Southwest. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM (1 August-15 September 1943), cat. no. 173.

John Sloan: Paintings, Prints, Drawings. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (2 October 1981-3 January 1982); traveled to Decordova and Dana Museum and Park, Lincoln, MA (23 January-7 March 1982); to Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI (18 March-2 May 1982); to Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (12 June-1 August 1982); to Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH (11 September-24 October 1982); to Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (6 November 1982-2 January 1983), cat. no. 15, pp. 17-20, 22, 52-53, illus. p. 53.

American Cities: The Artist's View. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (17 October 1989-7 January 1990).

America in Art: Fifty Great Paintings Celebrating Fifty Years. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (6 June-11 August 1991) pp. 8-11, 98-99, illus. p. 99, no cat. no.

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2 May-24 July 1994); to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (6 March-14 May 1995); pp. 286-291, illus. fig. no. 294.

A vertically oriented oil painting depicts a woman on the right hanging laundry on a line from a metal balcony. The laundry, created with thick, mostly white paint strokes, extends across the center of the painting in front of red-brick buildings. The woman has a light skin tone, wearing a blue dress and her hair in a bun and holding a clothespin in her mouth.

Sold c. 1939-1940 to Amelia White, Santa Fe.

John Sloan was a member of the Ashcan School, an artistic movement that focused on realistic scenes of daily life with a particular eye on images of working-class people and neighborhoods.

Ashcan School

Take a close look&mdash;how many different types of clothing can you see hanging on the laundry lines? It appears that the woman pictured here has a family, as there is clothing for men, women, and children drying in the sun.

All in the Family

Sloan was interested in showing life as it was in less well-to-do neighborhoods, such as those with tenement housing populated by working-class families and newly arrived immigrants. Here we can see that the buildings are all quite close together—close enough to string laundry lines between them.

A Woman's Work

John Sloan

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A Woman's Work

John Sloan

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A Woman's Work

John Sloan

Did You Know?

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A Woman's Work

John Sloan

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