Explaining Higgins
Datec. 1910
Artist
John Sloan
(American painter, etcher, and illustrator, 1871–1951)
MediumCrayon on paper
Dimensionssheet: 7 × 4 15/16 in. (17.8 × 12.5 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 2000
Object number2000-719a
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextThese sketches may reference the work of Eugene Higgins, an American etcher and painter whose drawings of the working class were compared to Sloan's work by Mary Fanton Roberts in The Craftsman in 1908. Sloan did not appreciate the comparison, explaining his view on Higgins in his diary: "His work is absolutely vacant—a bowed figure, a piece of archway, a chunk of shadow"—elements repeated in these little drawings. In particular, Sloan disliked the "melancholy sameness" of Higgins' art and thought it too formulaic in composition. However, when Sloan met Higgins in 1909, he liked him, and over time Sloan's opinion of Higgins' work improved.
Physical/Intellectual
