John Sloan

John Sloan Trust, Wilmington, Delaware (until at least 1991)

Kraushaar Galleries, New York

Acquired from the above in 1997 by the present owner

New York, Wanamaker Galleries, John Sloan: Paintings, Etchings, and Drawings, 1939, no. 60

Exh. Cat., Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, Annie Halenbake Ross Library, The Early Landscapes of John Sloan, 1969, no. 10

Grant Holcomb, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of John Sloan, 1900-1913, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Delaware, 1972, pp. 263-64, illustrated

Rowland Elzea, John Sloan's Oil Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, Part One, Newark, Delaware, 1992, no. 90, p. 80, illustrated

Considered to be one of the founding members of the celebrated Ashcan School as well as one of The Eight, John Sloan is primarily known for his gritty, urban realist scenes of the New York City working class. The present work, however, is a delightfully quotidian scene depicting a flock of chickens in a yard. With animated brushstrokes and vibrant colors, Sloan creates an atmosphere of quiet comfort in the work—a deep contrast with his moody city subjects.

Chickens, IV was executed in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania—where his family was living at the time—and is one of a few dozen oil paintings that Sloan composed with a sketch box he set up in 1906 that now belongs to the collection of the Helen Farr Sloan Library & Archives at the Delaware Art Museum. The present work is one of his earliest paintings executed outdoors, preceding his prolific period between 1914 and 1919 when he spent summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts painting the scenery around him.