Existing comment:
John Sloan
Stein at Window, Sixth Avenue, 1918
As rapid social change increasingly characterized urban America, Sloan and his Ashcan colleagues reassured themselves and their patrons by tempering the new with the old. Here, the painter has chosen a traditional subject: an artist's model in the studio, wearing a colorful silk tunic and surrounded by artworks. But his sitter, Efzenka Stein -- a working-class emigre from Bohemia -- is not the type of idealized beauty that graced the paintings of the previous generation. With a subtle swipe at earlier convention, Sloan pictures her on a well-worn "Morris" chair, seemingly oblivious to the artistic assemblage at her feet: a framed painting, ceramic pot, and bit of blue-and-white china, the cliched icon of late-19th-century Aestheticism, Stein fixes her gaze out the window to take in one of New York City's bustling neighborhoods. Amid the jumble of buildings, an American flag waves and a commuter train clatters by on the elevated railway. |