In the summer of 1906, Sloan purchased a small wooden sketch box and prepared for his first significant attempt to paint outside. Painting outdoors was popular among artists influenced by French Impressionism and was a feature of many American summer art schools. Sloan produced small panels—sized to fit into the lid of his sketch box—during his summer rambles for several years. Sometimes he worked alongside other artists, like his friend and former teacher Thomas Anshutz, who ran the Darby Summer School in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, where Sloan’s family lived. Small paintings, like Our Home, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania I, and diary entries record these outdoor sessions.
Left to right: Our Home, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, I, 1910. John Sloan (1871–1951). Oil on linen mounted to board, 8 1/2 × 10 1/2 inches. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1980.
© Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Green Grass and Purple Rocks, 1915. John Sloan (1871–1951). Oil on canvas, 20 1/4 × 24 1/4 inches. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of H. Beatty Chadwick, 1982. © Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Between 1914 and 1918, Sloan spent his summers teaching and painting outdoors in Gloucester, Massachusetts. His canvasses grew larger, his colors intensified, and his brushwork became looser. He studied the work of Vincent van Gogh and explored color theory with his friends, becoming a confident painter of expressive landscapes. A lively photograph—recently digitized—captures Sloan heading out with other artists to record a summer day on the coast.
When he started spending summers in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sloan built a platform behind his house to better observe and depict the dramatic, sun-drenched landscape of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He was so delighted with his painting deck that he illustrated it in a letter to his friend Robert Henri.
John Sloan’s Plein Air Painting Sketch Box
The Delaware Art Museum is the ideal place to study Sloan’s outdoor painting, and I encourage you to visit this summer, when a selection of his plein air paintings will be on view. DelArt displays work from every period of the artist’s career, and our archives house photographs, diaries, and illustrated letters that elucidate his practice. We even have that 1906 sketch box housing a small palette and tubes of paint. Check it out in the video above. Thanks to a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Science, these items (and thousands of others!) have been digitized for online researchers.
Heather Campbell Coyle
Curator of American Art
Left to right: East at Sunset, Kitchen Door, 1920. John Sloan (1871–1951). Oil on canvas, 16 × 20 inches. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of the John Sloan Trust, 2006. © Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Long Shadows, 1918. John Sloan (1871–1951). Oil on canvas, 20 × 26 inches. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of the John Sloan Trust, 2006. © Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Top: John’s Sloan’s sketck box.