John French Sloan was a co-founder of the Ashcan School, member of The Eight, organizer of and contributor to the 1913 Armory Show, teacher at the Art Students League, and co-founder of the Society of Independent Artists.
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Sloan spent his early life in Philadelphia, where his classmates at Central High School included fellow artist William Glackens and Albert C. Barnes, who would go on to become an influential art collector. When his father suffered a mental breakdown, the 16-year-old Sloan became the provider for his family and took a job as a cashier for a book and print seller. Two years later he joined a stationery store, where he designed cards and calendars while pursuing his own etchings. He began working as a freelance illustrator for The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1892, the same year he was introduced to Robert Henri and reunited with William Glackens. Henri encouraged Sloan’s artistic endeavors and the two became major proponents of a new American realism that would be dubbed “The Ashcan School” for its focus on the often gritty realities of urban living. In 1893, Henri and Sloan founded the "Charcoal Club," whose members included Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, a presaging of The Eight.
Sloan relocated to New York in 1904 while continuing to support himself as a freelance illustrator. He was soon doing work for books and journals such as Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Weekly, and The Saturday Evening Post. Painting in his free time, he was part of a group of artists that showed at MacBeth Galleries in 1908 in a challenge to the restrictive traditions of the National Academy of Design. This group, which was comprised of Robert Henri, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, and Arthur B. Davies became know as The Eight, and would go on to organize the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced Modernist, Impressionist, and Cubist painting to American audiences and transformed the art landscape in the U.S. Sloan is best known for his intimate scenes of people and places in New York City, incuding rooftops, saloons, street life, and restaurants. He shifted his interest from urban scenes in the late 1920s to focus on nudes and portraits, of which this painting is a striking example.