ACADEMIA Letters

From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New
Urban Space. Exhibitions in Pennsylvania and New York
Waldemar Deluga

From the Roof Tops - this is the name of an exhibition at the Palmer Museum of Art in State
College, Pennsylvania in 2019. It presents the works of John Sloan (1871-1951), an American
artist, a representative of the Art of a New Urban Space. He was born in 1871 in Lock Haven,
Pennsylvania, so a monographic exhibition was organized at a scientific centre, important for
this state. The exhibition was moved to New York and presented in June this year in Glens Falls
at The Hyde Collection museum. The second place of the exhibition symbolised the golden
age of the private collection in USA (ca. 1890 to 1940). A big part of the presented paintings,
prints, and drawing came from American private collections. Accompanying catalogue by
Adam M. Thomas introduces the reader to the subject matter presented at the exhibition in
Pennsylvania and New York.[1]
Sloan represents the Ashcan School, an artistic movement developing in the United States
at the beginning of the twentieth century. His works have been present during different exhi-
bitions, organised last century, but it was the first time, when the specific life of New Yorkers
on the roofs became the main motif of the exhibition.
Sloan addresses issues related to the lives of mass immigrants coming from Europe in
large numbers. Ideally involved in the activities of the Socialist Party, it shows the poverty
of New York. This subject did not match the New York salons, hence their absence from
exhibitions for many decades.[2] There are also fewer shows in the form of oil paintings, and
more drawings. And they are the most important part of the exhibition. “The city above the
city” becomes a place of entertainment for the inhabitants of New York, the world of lovers’
meetings and a place for recreation and rest. In oil paintings, Sloan shows beauty, like his
contemporaries, William Glackens and Charles Hoffbauer, whose colourful works are shown

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Waldemar Deluga, wdeluga@wp.pl

Citation: Deluga, W. (2021). From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions
in Pennsylvania and New York. Academia Letters, Article 1174. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1174.

1
 1. The
exhibition at the Palmer Museum of Art in State College, Pennsylvania.

at the exhibition. There are also images of pupils of Sloan Cecil Bell, Reginald Marsh and
Louis Ribak.
Sloan’s black-and-white engravings show the different world of the roofs of New York.
They are dark and sad. His graphic works show personal emotions. I have the impression that
they would not be “for sale”. Night love scenes become a nocturne. This part of exhibition
was more interesting for us.
Sloan’s painting and his work as an illustrator of magazines in Philadelphia since the 1890s
are well known.[3] But his etchings and lithographs are also worth mentioning. He worked
for the publisher The Frederick J, Quinby Company as an engraver. His early work can be
compared with the style of James McNeill Whistler’s and Joseph Pennel’s etchings. It has
been fifty years since the catalogue of prints by Peter Morse, curator of graphic art at the
Smithsonian Institution, was published.[4] It can be assumed that the time has come for the
next monography, especially that many publications have been made about Sloan’s paintings.
The first engravings, presented at the State College exhibition, were made by Sloan around
1906, when he was a New York resident, living in Greenwich Village. Roofs, Summer Night,
an etching first presented in 1906, was considered by the critics as vulgar. It depicts sleeping
people on the roofs of New York homes. In the summer night the naked couples cuddle each

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Waldemar Deluga, wdeluga@wp.pl

Citation: Deluga, W. (2021). From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions
in Pennsylvania and New York. Academia Letters, Article 1174. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1174.

2
 2. John Sloan, Red Kimono on
the Roof, 1912, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields,
James E. Roberts Fund, 54.55

other. Naturalistic performances were not really accepted by the local community.
As a politically involved socialist, since 1912 he made illustrations for the magazine The
Masses. Since then, his art shows New York as a city of blatant social inequalities, in de-
pictions of poor neighbourhoods. Sloan’s graphic works were noticed in 1913 at the famous
International Exhibition of Modern Art in the Armory Regiment in New York. There Sloan
presented his etchings, including Girl and Beggar. I associate Sloan’s graphic works with
graphic works by Bruno Schultz, a Jewish artist living in Drohobych, Ukraine, whose works
bear a similar expression.[5]
Further works made by Sloan in 1910s and 1920s depicted the nightlife of poor metropoli-
tan people. The exhibition showed drawings and, above all, oil paintings that correspond with
graphic compositions. An example is the lithography that Sloan made in 1923. Sunday, Dry-
ing Their Hair is a scene that is reversed in relation to the image of the same title, which was

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Waldemar Deluga, wdeluga@wp.pl

Citation: Deluga, W. (2021). From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions
in Pennsylvania and New York. Academia Letters, Article 1174. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1174.

3
 3. John Sloan, A Roof in Chelsea, New York, c. 1941/51, tempera underpaint with
oil-varnish glaze and wax finish on composition board, 21 1/8 x 26 1/16 inches. Hood
Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, purchased through the Julia L. Whittier Fund.
P.946.12.2

ordered ten years earlier by the editorial staff of Century Magazine.

Sloan returns to the subject of New York roofs in 1940s. Sunbathers on the Roof was pre-
sented at the State College and Glens Falls exhibitions (fig. 5). A copper plate from Collection
of Gary, Brenda, and Harley Ruttenber was assembled with an etching from the Palmer Mu-
seum of Art (fig. 4). The plate was gilded to bring out a drawing of the composition. Black
appears more bluntly. The character of the matrix was changed; a new work was created with
a concave relief depicting the scene of poor lovers.
Night scenes by the engravers of Martin Lewis and Armin Landeck, as well as photographs
by Walter Rosenblum and Weegee, complement the contextual story of Sloan’s constant in-
terest in rooftop spaces.

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Waldemar Deluga, wdeluga@wp.pl

Citation: Deluga, W. (2021). From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions
in Pennsylvania and New York. Academia Letters, Article 1174. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1174.

4
4. John Sloan, Sunbathers on the Roof, 1941, etching, 5 7/8 x 6 7/8 inches, Palmer Museum
of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, Gift of the Delaware Art Museum and the Helen
Farr Sloan Estate, 2017.68

The Palmer Museum has repeatedly organized exhibitions on American subjects. Curator
of the exhibition is an co-author of others catalogues, for example: Wild Spaces, Open Sea-
sons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art from 2016 year[6] or Bold, Cautious, True: Walt
Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era from 2009.[7]

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Waldemar Deluga, wdeluga@wp.pl

Citation: Deluga, W. (2021). From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions
in Pennsylvania and New York. Academia Letters, Article 1174. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1174.

5
5. John Sloan, Sunbathers on the Roof, 1941, gold-plated copper etching plate, 6 x 7 inches,
Collection of Gary, Brenda, and Hayley Ruttenberg

References
[1] Adam M. Thomas, From the Roof Tops. John Sloan and the Arts of a New Urban Space,
State College 2019.

[2] David W. Noble, Death of Nation. American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism,
Minneapolis, London 2002, p. 155.

[3] Ibidem, p. 154.

[4] Peter Morse, John Sloan’s Prints. Catalogue Raisonné of the Etchings, Lithographs,

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Waldemar Deluga, wdeluga@wp.pl

Citation: Deluga, W. (2021). From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions
in Pennsylvania and New York. Academia Letters, Article 1174. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1174.

6
 and Posters, London 1970. The second edition was published in 2001. Cf. https://www.
art-books.com/custom_pdfs/Book_Sloan_PN_t.pdf

[5] Małgorzata Kitowska, „Xięga Bałwochwalcza” – grafiki oryginalne (cliché verre) Brunona
Schultza, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, XLIII, 1981, No. 4, pp. 401-410.

[6] Kevin Sharp (ed.), Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art,
State College 2016.

[7] Kevin Sharp (ed.), Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil
War Era, Memphis, Katonah 2009.

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Waldemar Deluga, wdeluga@wp.pl

Citation: Deluga, W. (2021). From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions
in Pennsylvania and New York. Academia Letters, Article 1174. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1174.