John Sloan. John French Sloan was an American painter and etcher.
   He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. He was also a member of the group known as The Eight.
   He is best known for his urban genre scenes and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often observed through his Chelsea studio window. Sloan has been called the premier artist of the Ashcan School who painted the inexhaustible energy and life of New York City during the first decades of the twentieth century and an early twentieth-century realist painter who embraced the principles of Socialism and placed his artistic talents at the service of those beliefs.
   John Sloan was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, on August 2, 1871, to James Dixon Sloan, a man with artistic leanings who made an unsteady income in a succession of jobs, and Henrietta Ireland Sloan, a schoolteacher from an affluent family. Sloan grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he lived and worked until 1904, when he moved to New York City.
   He and his two sisters were encouraged to draw and paint from an early age. In the fall of 1884 he enrolled at the prestigious Central High School in Philadelphia, where his classmates included William Glackens and Albert C. Barnes. In the spring of 1888, his father experienced a mental breakdown that left him unable to work, and Sloan became responsible,
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