John Sloan on Drawing

I have been reading "John Sloan on Drawing and Painting" previously published as "The Gist of Art" and I believe some of his thoughts are worth quoting. If you are not familiar with John Sloan I have included a brief bio at the end of the quotes. The Delaware Art Museum has just opened "Seeing the City: Sloan's New York" a traveling exhibition which focuses on Sloan's images of New York City and the effect New York had on his art. It is on display through January 20th when it will travel to three other venues. This first quote is about drawing with pen:

"The pen is a wonderful means of intellectual expression in the hands of the graphic artist. The technique of the pen comes very close to registering the mental process of the artist. The pen strikes the paper with its black line. It describes the general contour, the textural contour, the kind of living edge that signifies. It goes further and describes the more important edge, the profile that projects toward you. Then the line follows with textural notations, the roughness of this, the graininess of that, giving a textural face to those vivid creative, expressive contours."

"Drawing has a permanent advantage over all the other methods employed by the artist. When you take a black pencil or crayon and make marks on the white surface of a sheet of paper in order to express something you have in mind, you are using an instrument which confines you strictly to the making of symbols."

"Line is the most significant graphic means we have. It is entirely a sign, a mental invention. You don't see lines in nature, only contours of tones. Unless you try to imitate the outside edge of something as the eye sees it, you are making a sign every time you draw a line. Lines can mean form, depth, shadow and light. The line defines the construction of the form, the geometrical shape. The good line does more than describe the outside edge, it contains the form. One of the most important line devices is the set of parallel lines used to indicate the surface of a plane, the direction in which it is going and its place. The fine line is positive and explanatory. It may be as severe as a Durer or as sensitive and free as a Daumier. Line is the most powerful device of drawing."

"Realization is art existence. It comes when you make something more real to the mind than it is in nature. In a Cranach or Durer every knuckly detail shows an appreciation for something not seen by the eye. It was their way to realization to find warts and hairs, wood-grain, glass, and pebbles to give surfaces textural life. If you haven't a sense of realization, if you haven't the strong desire and yearning to make things on your paper that will satisfy the mind, you won't go very far as an artist."

"In a black and white drawing, color-texture is made with selected tones, textures or linework that suggest the surface of the whole form. Crude contrasts of black and white do not necessarily make for realization or power. The power that counts is significant drawing. All the greatest work has a combination of strength and delicacy."

"There is an objective value in all the fundamental forms. Horizontal and vertical lines havae stability. Diagonals and curves express movement. A circle or spiral gives a feeling of continuous movement. Squares and triangles have strong architectural character."

"You cannot study music by going out and listening to running brooks and lowing kine. The way to study art is to look at art. See pictures. When someone asked Renoir which he would take if he had to choose between the museum and nature, he chose the museum."

John Sloan, born in 1874, began his career as a newspaper illustrator for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sloan soon met Robert Henri, who was then teaching courses at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Sloan enrolled in a drawing class at the Academy taught by Thomas Anshutz, and eventually began renting Henri's studio at 806 Walnut Street, which became a meeting place of other young newspaper illustrators including William Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn. These artists along with Henri are now termed the "Philadelphia Five." By 1896-97, with the encouragement of Henri, Sloan began painting seriously, primarily portraits, aside from his commercial work, and soon began exhibiting his canvases. By 1904, following the lead of the rest of the Philadelphia Five, Sloan moved to New York City with his wife Dolly, whom he married in 1901.

In 1908, Sloan was one of the participating artists in the landmark exhibition, The Eight, at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. Although Sloan considered himself a professional artist, with his particular aptitude for drawing and print making, he continued to support himself as a commercial illustrator until 1916. (Sloan did not sell a painting until 1913 when Albert C. Barnes of Philadelphia purchased Nude in the Green Scarf.)

In 1919, Sloan took his first trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico at the urging of Henri, who had visited the town on two separate occasions in 1916 and 1917. In 1920, Sloan purchased a home in Santa Fe and through 1950, spent four months of every year, except one, in the Southwest.