1871-1951
Painter

Early Years.

John French Sloan was born on 2 August 1871 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, a lumber town where his family had a cabinetmaking business. After losing their business and their home during the depression of 1873, they moved to Philadelphia in 1876, when John was five. There he spent hours in a great-uncle's library, reading the classics and paging through magazines such as Punch and Harpers Monthly. He especially liked the illustrations, keeping a scrapbook of them and illustrating his own copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island when he was twelve. As a teenager he began to sell his pen-and-ink drawings; he also earned money by designing calendars and greeting cards.

A New Career and an Important Friend.

When he was twenty-one Sloan took a job as an illustrator for the Philadelphia Inquirer. That same year he met and became friends with the realist painter Robert...