John Sloan (1871-1951)
Girl, Back to Piano, 1932
John Sloan was born in the small Pennsylvania town of Lock Haven in 1871. He was a student of the Pennsylvania Academy and worked as an illustrator for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Press. In 1905 Sloan moved to New York City where he also worked as an illustrator. Sloan was a member of the Ashcan school and taught at the Art Students League of NYC. He played an important role in organizing the Society for Independent Artists and served as the president for some time.
Sloan is best known for his paintings and etchings of city life and nude studies. Although Sloan preferred to depict the “common people” in his artwork, he is quoted as saying, “I never mingled with the people, and the sympathy and understanding I have for the common people as they are meanly called, I feel as a spectator of life”. Sloan’s works are part of the permanent collections of leading museums throughout the U.S.
Girl, Back to the Piano (1932) is a typical work in his later style. Sloan taught for twenty-five years, and the subject is Gitel Kahn, a student of his at the Art Students League with whom he was romantically involved for several years during this period. Executed in tempera on panel, his medium and technique suggests a Renaissance formality in contrast to the relaxed pose of his attractive subject who looks directly at the artist with an engaged expression, her relaxed and confident gaze reveal their comfortable relationship. The artist was pleased with the resolution of the formal elements of this painting: “An excellent color tonal quality pervades this canvas. The linear texture comes and goes, here and there, and is perhaps on that account very satisfactory. The nature of the light is well expressed. The photo seems to search out the painting more than the eye does.” Kahn posed for a number of works for him, one of which the artist noted his admiration of her “warm brown torso.”
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