John Sloan, Turning out the Light, an etching
United States of America, AD 1905
John Sloan (1871 – 1951) painter, printmaker
and teacher, first took up etching as a self-taught
adolescent. Moving to New York in 1904, he became part of a
group of eight artists, better known as “The Ashcan School”,
who focused on creating images of urban realism. Between 1891
and 1940 Sloan produced some 300 etchings. He was also one of
the first chroniclers of the American scene and wrote about
printmaking and the etching technique.
This etching comes from the series of 10
prints entitled New York City Life, recording the lives of
the ordinary inhabitants in less affluent areas of Manhattan. The
prints had a mixed reception at the time and a number were rejected
from an exhibition of the American Watercolor Society as
‘vulgar’ and ‘indecent’.
The mood of Turning out the Light
is one of anticipation and intimacy: the woman glances down at the
man lying stretched out on their unmade bed, while her discarded
stockings are draped over the bed frame. The intimacy is heightened
by the strong contrast between the densely worked areas of
cross-hatching in the deeper shadows and the unetched blank areas
of the light.
P. Morse, John Sloan's Prints
(London and New Haven, Yale University Press, 1969)