MARIANNA SLOAN

The reputation of Marianna “Nan” Sloan was eclipsed by that of her more famous brother, John Sloan.  Her work, including many murals, is virtually unknown outside of specialists’ circles.  She was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania on September 21, 1875 and brought up in Philadelphia where her father, James Dixon Sloan, moved the family a year later.  Marianna’s mother, Henrietta Ireland Sloan, who taught English, belonged to a family acquainted with various English artists, including Walter Crane (1845-1915) and Kate Greenaway (1846-1901).  Marianna’s aunt Emma (Ireland) Ward and her husband William H. Ward resided in England as managers of the British branch of Marcus Ward and Company, publishers of illustrated books and greeting cards.  Thus a certain English flavor dominated the Sloan household.  After John dropped out of high school to help with the family income, he began to study art, and this inspired his younger sister.  John Loughery (1995, p. 8) describes the adolescent Marianna as “narrow” and “sternly judgmental.”  She and her sister Bess were “true products of their aunts’ forbidding social codes. . . . Marianna acquired in her youth a pinched, nervous look that stayed with her for many years.”

Marianna received her training at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women; she studied anatomy and composition under the guidance of Elliott Daingerfield and later learned from Robert Henri.  His influence seems to have been important in teaching her spontaneity in execution, freedom from detail, and observation of a subject, “in the biggest, broadest sense,” as William Innes Homer expressed Henri’s teaching legacy.  Each of these factors was germane to the technique of impressionism, and they remained significant elements of Marianna’s art.  At first, she limited her painting to landscape studies in watercolor, which she began exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as early as 1898.  Her experiments in watercolor technique resulted in an unusual manner of painting with bristle brushes (usually used with oil painting), which engendered a broad style in this otherwise delicate medium (W. M. W., 1906, p. 73).  Marianna Sloan used a narrow range of subject matter and developed compositional skills.

Sloan exhibited her works at the PAFA and at the Art Institute of Chicago, and by 1904 she was given a one-woman show in Philadelphia and became the recipient of a bronze medal at the St. Louis Universal Exposition for her watercolor with the popular title, Sunlight and Shadow.  Meanwhile, she was employed as a dressmaker (Loughery, 1995, p. 77).  In the following year, her work was exhibited in England at the Royal Academy and at the Birmingham annual.  Probably in 1910, she visited Cornwall, a favorite spot of American impressionists in England.  Marianna’s oil painting, A Rocky Beach was purchased by the PAFA’s John Lambert Fund in 1915. 

The work of Marianna Sloan does not appear to have been influenced by John Sloan’s paintings.  Although she did execute urban scenes, her technique was more in line with American impressionism and there was some concern for maintaining a kind of Whistlerian simplicity.  Marianna Sloan was fond of fat pigment and surface texture, showing great spontaneity.  Working out of doors, she produced well handled effects of light and atmosphere.  A writer in 1906 described her as “a vigorous landscape painter, going to nature direct for her inspiration....” (W. M. W., 1906, p. 73).  Perhaps because she maintained a studio in the Germantown area of Philadelphia for many years, Marianna Sloan did not become directly involved with the New York art community, though she was a member of the Society of Independent Artists.

Marianna accepted commissions for mural work and continued to paint, but for the most part, her active career as a regularly exhibiting artist was over by the twenties. By 1951, she was running a used bookstore in Germantown, now old, white-haired, and embittered, dwelling on how she had been the one in the family destined to be a great painter, and claiming she had sacrificed her career to promote that of her brother (Loughery, 1995, p. 366). She died in Philadelphia on March 19, 1954.

Sources:
W. M. W., “Studio Talk,” International Studio 28 (March  1906): 70-73; Brooks, Van Wyck, John Sloan: A Painter’s Life. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1955, pp. 4, 36, 109; Huber, Christine Jones, The Pennsylvania Academy and Its Women: 1850 to 1920. Philadelphia: PAFA,  1973, pp. 42-43; Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer. American Women Artists: From Early Indian Times to the Present. Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1982, pp. 168-169; Sternberg, Paul E., Art by American Women. Gainesville, GA: Brenau College, 1991, p. 95; Loughery, John, John Sloan, Painter and Rebel. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995, pp. 2-3, 6-8, 66, 77, 259, 340, 366.

Submitted by Richard H. Love and Michael Preston Worley, Ph.D.