Movies

Artist John Sloan (American, 1871-1951)

Date1913

DimensionsFrame: 25 1/4 × 29 1/4 × 2 1/2 in. (64.1 × 74.3 × 6.4 cm)
Painting: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1940.16

Not on View

Label TextThe seductive electric glow of a movie theater draws passersby like moths. The featured film, A Romance of the Harem, promises lurid entertainment and capitalizes on the “Orientalism” craze—Western fascination with exotic Eastern cultures. Film itself was still an exotic spectacle. Just like in the silent films of the day, the interplay of glances between the people in the painting engages the viewer and establishes drama. John Sloan was one of a group of New York-based artists who created a particularly American style of painting: gritty urban scenes often painted with quick brushstrokes that suggest, rather than define, form. Though the group was later dubbed the “Ashcan School” for its unglamorous subjects, Sloan and his peers found a kind of beauty in the ordinary realities of city life in the first decades of the 20th century.Published ReferencesSloan Archives, Delaware Art Museum, in card file by the artist: "Night outside show. Carmine St., N.Y."

American Artist Group, John Sloan, New York, 1945, repr.

The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, no. 135, May 1952, (dated 1913).

"The Artist Looks at Show Business," Show Business Illustrated, Jan. 2, 1962, repr. p. 86-87.

"Art and American Life," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 7, no. 3, Autumn 1964, pp. 63-70, repr. p. 67.

St. John, Bruce, John Sloan's New York Scene, New York, 1965, p. 237.

Baigell, Matthew, A History of American Painting, New York, 1971, p. 188, repr. ill. 9-13, p. 189.

Holcomb, G., III, "A Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings of John Sloan, 1900-1913," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, 1972, no. 187, repr.

Stern, J., "Robert Henri and the 1915 San Diego Exposition," American Art Review, II, Sept.- Oct. 1975, p. 117, repr. (col.) p. 115.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, p. 99, pl. 157.

Elzea, Rowland, John Sloan's Oil Paintings, a Catalogue Raisonne, Newark, DE, 1991, vol. 1, p. 128, no. 224, repr.

Ciment, Michel, Le crime a l'ecran une histoire de l'amerique, Paris, 1992, p. 18, repr. (col.).

Snyder, Robert W. and Rebecca Zurier, "Picturing the City," in Metropolitan Lives, Washington, D. C., 1995, p. 172, fig. 186.

Sloan, John, Revolutionaries of Realism: the Letters of John Sloan and Robert Henri, Princeton, 1997, p. 225, no. 1, fig. 82, p. 227.

McFarland, Gerald W., Inside Greenwich Village; A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918, Amherst, MA, 2001, pp. 179, 185, fig. 34, p. 186.

Faragher, John Mack, Out of Many: A History of the American People, 4th ed., Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall, 2003, p. 642, repr. (col.).

Venn, Beth and Adam D. Weinberg, eds., Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art 1900-1950, Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Whitney, 1999, p. 60, repr., (col.).

Sharpe, William Chapman, New York Nocturne: the City after Dark in Literature, Painting and Photography, 1850-1950, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 173, fig. 4.2, p. 174.

Fahlman, Betsy, Kraushaar Galeries: Celebrating 125 Years, New York, Kraushaar Galleries, 2010, repr. (col.) p. 20, (det.) p. 23.

Exhibition HistoryNew York, MacDowell Club, 1914.

Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, 9th Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, 1914, no. 103 (as Movies).

San Diego, Panama-California Exposition, 1915, no. 27, repr.

The Toledo Museum of Art, Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings Acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art, 1901-1951, 1951.

Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1952.

Bloomfield Hills, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Light and the Painter, 1952, no. 61.

New York, Whitney Musuem of American Art, John Sloan, 1871-1951, 1952, no. 35, repr. (The Toledo Museum of Art).

Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. 1956.

The Fine Arts Club of Chicago, 1961.

Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, "Modern American Painting, 1915," 1962-1963, Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 9, p. 22, no. 43.

Milwaukee Art Center, Pop Art and the American Tradition, 1965, pp. 13, 15.

New York, IBM Gallery; Wilmington, Delaware Art Museum; Columbus Museum of Art; Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum, John Sloan, Spectator of Life, 1988, no. 71, p. 107 and repr. p. 31 (col.).

Allentown Art Museum, PA., Painting Progress: American Art & the Idea of Technology 1800-1917, 1991, p. 20.

Williamstown, MA., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery; Charlotte, NC, Mint Museum of Art, Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930, 2000-2001, no. 58, pp. 42, 207, repr. (col.).

Minneapolis, MN, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota; Montclair Art Museum, NJ; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, On the Edge of Your Seat: Popular Theater and Film in Early Twentieth Century American Art, 2002-2003, pp. 138, 182-183, fig. 9.5 (col.), p. 184, p. [11], repr. (col.).

Wilmington, Delaware Art Museum; Greensburg, PA, Westmoreland Museum of American Art; Chicago, The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art; Winston-Salem, NC, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Seeing the City: Sloan's New York, 2007-2009, p. 173, 174, fig. 127, p. 175 (col.).

Toledo Museum of Art, George Bellows and New York, 1900-1930, Feb. 14 - Apr. 21, 2013 (gallery 18, Univesity of Michigan student show).