AFA Winter 2017

modern art to a broad American audience. Critics and visitors to t he show were c aptivated and conf used by European postimpressionist paintings by Cézanne, Matisse, and Van Gogh, and cubist compositions by Picasso and Duchamp. Before the Armory Show, Sloan certainly had been aware of the wide range of modern art exhibited in New York, but the exhibition seems to have left its mark; his paintings soon began to vibrate with high- keyed color and rhythmic brushwork (Fig. 8). Between 1914 and 1918, Sloan and his wife spent summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with artist friends, including Charles and A lice Winter and Randa ll Davey, who were a lso experimenting with the Maratta color system. Sloan committed himself to painting in oils daily when in Gloucester. Most of the resulting pictures were landscapes painted outdoors and marked by saturated colors and patterned brushwork that may derive from the Van Gogh paintings Sloan encountered at the Armory Show (Fig. 9). Sloan’s summers in Gloucester were immensely 2017 Antiques & Fine Art 101 Fig. 6: John Sloan (1871–1951), Coytesville on the Palisades, 1908. Oil on linen mounted on board, 8¾ × 10⅞ inches. Delaware Art Museum; Special Purchase Fund, 1960. © 2017 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Fig. 7: John Sloan’s Sketch Box and Oil Paints, ca. 1906. Wooden box with palette and oil paints, 9¾ x 13 x 3 inches. John Sloan Manuscript Collection, Helen Farr Sloan Library and Archives, Delaware Art Museum.