Memory

Memory is an apt title for this serene image of warmly recalled friendship. John Sloan depicted himself smoking a pipe and drawing while his wife, Dolly, sits nearby; in the foreground, Sloan's artistic mentor, Robert Henri, draws while his wife, Linda, reads aloud. Sloan had been a young illustrator when he met Henri in Philadelphia, and recalled that Henri "set me to painting seriously." While her three companions stare down in concentration, Dolly looks up to hear Linda's voice and the soft scratching of pencils. Returning her gaze, we can almost hear the sounds of Memory.
The etching recalls the many evenings in 1905 when the four gathered in Henri's New York apartment. By January 1906, when Sloan made this etching, the scene was only a memory. Linda Henri had died in December 1905.