Turning out the Light

John French Sloan began his career in Philadelphia, training at the city’s prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. It is in New York that he became an integral member of the Ashcan School of American painters founded by Robert Henri at the turn of the twentieth century. The New York based group of painters and illustrators sought to dismantle the rigid structure of painting academies and distance themselves both stylistically and ideologically from the American Impressionists. Characterized by a brash, gestural brushwork and dark, heavily inked plates, the Ashcans chose to depict the vitality of the lower classes, and the immigrant, working-class communities in New York.

Part of his New York City Life series, in this intimate, interior scene, Sloan has welcomed his viewer into an unassuming, cluttered apartment. The entirety of the picture plane is occupied by a metal-framed bed, whose billowing linens deflate under a young woman, who sits up on her knees and reaches across her body to switch off a lamp above her head. In this act of Turning off the Light, the woman lovingly catches the gaze of her lounging partner and in a simultaneous, and seemingly brisk movement, pinches the fabric near her chest to undo her nightgown. This etching is uncharacteristic of the majority of Sloan’s work, awarding his viewers a rare glimpse into one of Lower Manhattan’s private dwellings, rather than a public street view.