The City from Greenwich Village

1922

John Sloan

Painter, American, 1871 - 1951

From a high vantage point, we look across and down at a nighttime cityscape of buildings and an elevated train in this horizontal painting. Muted tones of brick red, mustard yellow, plum purple, and avocado green dominate the buildings in the scene. Shadowy buildings of various heights fill the left side closest to us. We look down onto most of their roofs, and a building on the far left at about our eye level is topped by a water tower. The red-brick and muted green facades of two buildings facing us are illuminated by a harsh light from below, but our view is blocked by a dark rooftop closer to us. A sign on one of the lit buildings reads “MOONSHINE.” A dark brown train on an elevated rail line snakes from beyond these buildings to curve toward us in the center of the composition. Two cars drive under or alongside the rail line, and indistinct forms on a corner between them suggest people. To the right of the train stands a twelve-story triangular building that reaches of the top edge of the canvas. The narrow side facing us is only slightly wider than a single window. From there, the left and right sides of the building flare out to create a triangular footprint. Some windows are lit, and some are dark. Beyond these buildings, more muted red, yellow, and green buildings in the middle distance are also lit from below. Tiny windows of three more high-rise buildings gleam in the distance on the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up the composition. Pale, rose-pink buildings are piled high in the deep distance in the upper left. They shimmer against the cloud-filled, plum-purple and mauve-pink sky. The artist signed the lower left, “John Sloan.”
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John Sloan was noted for his realist representations of life in New York City’s poor immigrant neighborhoods. Painted in 1922, this nocturnal vista of Lower Manhattan, seen from the roof of his Greenwich Village studio, is regarded as the culmination of Sloan’s city scenes. In his own description of the picture, Sloan stated that it “makes a record of the beauty of the older city which is giving way to the chopped-out towers of the modern New York.” Sloan has commented on the artifice of the modern city by including the Moonshine advertisement on a building at the lower left. This fictional brand is a reference to the illicitly distilled and distributed liquor that was popular during Prohibition. The truncated moon graphic evokes what the city’s artificial electric lighting so effectively obscures: natural moonlight. Despite Sloan’s critical attitude toward urban modernization, the painting possesses a magical quality, as one looks over the elevated train tracks on Greenwich Village’s lower Sixth Avenue toward the eerily illuminated skyscrapers—the Woolworth Building and Singer Tower—on the horizon.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Helen Farr Sloan

  • Dimensions

    overall: 66 × 85.7 cm (26 × 33 3/4 in.)
    framed: 87.31 × 107.32 × 6.35 cm (34 3/8 × 42 1/4 × 2 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1970.1.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: The City from Greenwich Village, 1922

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1871-1951]; his estate;[1] gift 1970 to NGA.
[1] The letter of 12 January 1970 from the artist's widow, Helen Farr Sloan, to John Bullard of the NGA (in NGA curatorial files), includes the following notes about the painting: "1923 - the picture is consigned to Kraushaar" and "1945 - Sloan gave the picture to HFS - it has been in the John Sloan Trust since Estate Period."

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1922

  • Twenty-First Annual International Exhibition of Paintings, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, April-June 1922, no. 108, as The City, from Greenwich.

  • Sixth Annual Exhibition of The Society of Independent Artists, Waldorf Astoria, New York, March-April 1922, no. 701, as The City from Greenwich.

1923

  • Baltimore Charcoal Club, 1923.

1924

  • Tenth Annual Exhibition of Paintings by American Artists, Detroit Institute of Art, 1924, no. 30.

1925

  • First Pan-American Exhibition of Oil Paintings, Los Angeles Museum, 1925-1926.

  • Thirty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, 1925, no. 200, as New York from Greenwich Village.

1926

  • Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition: Paintings, Sculpture and Prints in the Department of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, June-December 1926, no. 280.

  • The Tenth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, April-May 1926, no. 259, as The City from Greenwich.

1932

  • Grand Central Gallery, New York, 1932.[1]

1934

  • John Sloan, Montross Gallery, New York, 1934, no. 14.

1938

  • John Sloan: Retrospective Exhibition, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 1938, no. 18, repro.

1939

  • The Forty-Sixth Annual Exhibition of American Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, October-November 1939, no. 132.

  • 46th Annual Exhibition, Nebraska Art Association, Lincoln, March-April 1939, no. 39.

1940

  • John Sloan, Art Department, University of Missouri, Columbia, 1940.

  • Oil Paintings by John Sloan, Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, January 1940.

1941

  • American Landscape Painting: George Inness to George Bellows, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 1941, no. 18.

  • Fort Worth Art Association, March 1941.

1943

  • Living American Painters, John Herron Art Museum, Indianapolis, February 1943, no. 53.

  • Romantic Painting in America, Museum of Modern Art, New York, followed by other venues as a traveling exhibition, 1943-1945, no. 184, repro.

1945

  • Artists of the Philadelphia Press: William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1945, no. 63.

1946

  • John Sloan: Painting and Prints. Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Retrospective, Carpenter Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1946, no. 12.

1948

  • John Sloan Paintings, Dayton Art Institute, April 1948.

  • John Sloan: Retrospective Exhibition, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, February 1948, no. 20, repro.

1949

  • The Turn of the Century: American Artists 1890-1920, Des Moines Art Center, 1949, unnumbered catalogue.

1952

  • John Sloan 1871-1951, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, 1952, no. 52, repro.

1961

  • The Life and Times of John Sloan, Delaware Art Center, Wilmington, September-October 1961, no. 29, repro.

  • Oil Paintings by John Sloan, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, November-December 1961, no. 7.

1962

  • The Art of John Sloan 1871-1951, Walker Art Museum, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, 1962, no. 46, repro.

1971

  • John Sloan 1871-1951, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; M.H. DeYoung Memorial Museum, San Francisco; City Art Museum of St. Louis; Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Ohio; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1971-1972, no. 135, repro.

1981

  • The Railroad in the American Landscape: 1850-1950, Wellesley College Museum, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1981, no. 53, repro.

  • John Sloan: Paintings, Prints, Drawings, traveling exhibition organized by Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, 6 venues, 1981-1983, no. 13, repro. (shown only in Hanover).

1982

  • Japanese Artists Who Studied in [the] U.S.A. and The American Scene, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 1982, no. 78, color repro.

1984

  • Museo de los Museos: arte universal a través de los tiempos, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1984, no. 42, repro.

1985

  • Night Lights: 19th and 20th Century American Nocturne Paintings, The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, 1985, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1988

  • John Sloan: Spectator of Life, IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, 1988, no. 97, repro.

2007

  • Seeing the City: Sloan's New York, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania; David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago; Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, 2007-2009, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 52.

Bibliography

1972

  • Scott, David W. "The City from Greenwich Village." Studies in the History of Art 4 (1971-1972): 106-119, color repro.

1975

  • Scott, David W. John Sloan. New York, 1975: 162, color pl. 28.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 223, repro.

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 17, no. 55, color repro.

  • Simms, Patterson. John Sloan: A Concentration of Works from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of Art. New York, 1980: 20-21, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 209, repro. 210-211, color repro. 224.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 572, no. 876, color repro.

1987

  • Catchpole, Hubert R. “The Cover.” Journal of the American Medical Association 257 (24 April 1987): 2125, cover repro.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 170, no. 62, color repro.

1991

  • Elzea, Rowland. John Sloan’s Oil Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. Newark, 1991: 257-258, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 337, repro.

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 250, repro.

1993

  • Dougherty, James. Walt Whitman and the Citizen's Eye. Baton Rouge, 1993: 264-266, fig. 12.

1995

  • Loughery John. John Sloan: Painter and Rebel. New York, 1995: 261-262.

1998

  • Lamia, Stephen. “Night." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:657.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 404, no. 334, color repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: John Sloan

Wikidata ID

Q20192383

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