John Sloan and The Eight

Gallery 15
Lynn Herrick Sharp Gallery

John Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn—the core of the group that would become known as the Ashcan School—met in Philadelphia, where they worked as illustrators for the city’s major newspapersand studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  They gathered around the charismatic Robert Henri, who encouraged them to pursue careers as artists and to experiment with modern subjects and styles. In his studio on Walnut Street, Sloan painted insightful portraits and began to develop a distinctive vision of the city focused on the streets of his neighborhood.

One by one, these five friends relocated to New York City where they shared an interest in ordinary urban life as a subject.  Their subject matter proved unpopular with genteel factions of the art establishment, and their works were rejected from prominent juried exhibitions.  In 1908, this group from Philadelphia joined with three other artists—Arthur B. Davies, Maurice Prendergast, and Ernest Lawson—to hold a protest exhibition at Macbeth Galleries.  The show earned them the nickname “The Eight,” and they became associated with gritty city subjects, though the artists also painted landscapes, portraits, and figure studies.

For many years, John Sloan was an instructor at the Art Students League, where his students included Reginald Marsh, Isabel Bishop, Adolph Gottlieb, and Jackson Pollock.

The Delaware Art Museum owes our unparalleled collection of art by John Sloan and his circle largely to the extraordinary generosity of Helen Farr Sloan, the artist’s second wife, who died in December 2005.