Offered for sale is an extremely rare and very sought-after print by well know artist John Sloan, American (New York/New Mexico/New Hampshire, 1871-1951).
Etching on tan chine-colle on thick wove paper, 1906.
Signed in pencil. Also titled and annotated in pencil, including with each sitter's initials below the platemark.
Title: Memory, 1 of 100 proofs, signed lower right "John Sloan", Medium: Etching on paper, 7-1/2 x 9 in. (plate) / 11-1/2 x 12-1/4 in. (page);
Condition: minor toning,
Reference: Morse 136, vi/VI. Edition of 100 (110 actually printed)
About the Scene: One of Sloan’s most popular etchings, this scene recalls the many quiet evenings Sloan and his wife Dolly spent in the company of Linda and Robert Henri after their move to New York in 1904. The scene takes place in Henri’s studio. As Linda reads, Dolly stares pensively, while their husbands smoke and sketch. Each is lost in his or her own thoughts yet comfortable in the others’ silent presence; this, Sloan implies, is the essence of real friendship. Sloan made this etching in January 1906, just weeks after Linda’s death from gastritis.
Another more elaborate analysis of the scene: After moving to New York in 1904, John and Dolly Sloan quickly renewed the friendships of other Philadelphia artists who had made the move earlier. Chief among those friends were Robert and Linda Henri. Sloan and Henri were in fact more than friends. They were mutual sources of inspiration, artistic collaborators, fellow teachers, and prolific writers whose years-long correspondence with each other was lively and revealing. This etching, Memory, 1906, demonstrates palpably how close the two couples were. The title is poignant. Sloan completed the print just months after Linda Henri’s death at the age of thirty. [1] The image is meant to capture the warmth of evenings spent together, in each other’s homes, engaged in pleasurable activities. The etching shows the two artists seated across the table from each other, sketching and smoking. Henri, seated in a comfortable armchair, sports his characteristic bushy mustache. Sloan is thin and bespectacled, with a lock of hair falling across his forehead. Dolly, seated at back between the two men, gazes directly out at the viewer. She is petite and pretty, with a round face and softly curling tendrils of hair. Linda Henri, prominently placed in the foreground, is entertaining the group by reading aloud. She is presented in profile, her features delicate and her hair and dress elegant. Something about her thin frame hints at the ill health she had suffered for years. The scene is rounded out by touching, homey details: a basket of fruit on the table, a box of candy, a deck of cards, and books and sketches on the shelf at left. The mood is one of quiet intimacy. In fact, Sloan gave the etching the alternate title Family Group. For an artist who had troubled relationships with his own family, this adopted family was particularly meaningful. Art historian Alexis L. Boylan points out that Sloan was particularly invested in capturing the likenesses accurately. She notes that Sloan showed the etching to Henri as he worked on it, at one point even entreating his friend to aid him in its composition: “Henri made a sketch to help me out in my portrait which I’m attempting with much disaster in the ‘Family’ group etching.” [2] The fact that the two friends collaborated on the project to memorialize their lost loved one adds an extra note of poignancy to the work.
Notes: In 1892, Sloan met Robert Henri, who would prove to be a significant influence on his life. Henri, already an accomplished artist, had just returned from three years in Europe, where he had found inspiration in such Old Masters as Frans Hals and Diego Velazquez. Henri advocated for the “subordination of so-called ‘finish’ to broad effects, simplicity of planes, purity and strength of color, and particularly the preservation of that impression which first delighted the sense of beauty and caused the subject to be chosen.” [2] Sloan, who had been frustrated by the stilted academic instruction at the Academy, embraced Henri’s bold, avant-garde approach.
[1] See John Loughery, John Sloan: Painter and Rebel (New York: H. Holt, 1995).
[2] Robert Henri, quoted in Loughery, John Sloan, 26.