John Sloan: Painter and Rebel

by John Loughery

Documenting New York City's cultural coming-of-age, a historical biography of an American painter and propagandist reveals the social and political scene of the early 1900s, including Sloan's activist wife, Dolly

Genres: Art, Biography, Nonfiction

438 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1995

Reviews

[Tom]

Look up Sloan's "In the Back Room of McSorley," (described in Joseph Mitchell's essay about the famous bar, "The Old Place at Home," both portrayed with the same sense of restrained melancholy and admiration) and "In the Wake of the Ferry," for evidence that Sloan was much more than a topical illustrator of street life in NYC. Though I find fellow Ashcan artist George Bellows more stirring and dramatic on a purely visual level, Sloan subtly plumbs the inner depths of his subjects to greater effect.

I didn't know this bio existed until I came across it in a used book store recently. Exciting to see that someone else considers Sloan worthy of a full-length bio.