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Robert Smullyan Sloan“Central Park in Winter, 1949” Manhattan New York City Snow Day Sleds Children1949
1949
$5,500
£4,178.64
€4,802.14
CA$7,725.42
A$8,408.93
CHF 4,455.59
MX$101,130.11
NOK 56,651.70
SEK 51,915.02
DKK 35,871.68
About the Item
With a studied hand, Sloan captures the human theater of a snow-covered Central Park filled with bundled-up New Yorkers, sledding, walking, chatting, and caring for children. The expanse of white snow functions as both a stage and a unifying visual field, bringing coherence to the multitude of tiny figures scattered across the park’s gentle slope.
Stylistically, the work blends the spirit of American folk and naïve art with allusions to earlier old masters, from the simplified rendering of figures and a compositional flatness that echoes the work of artists like Grandma Moses or Horace Pippin to the heightened perspective and lively vignettes like those of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Sloan’s work is more observational than symbolic; it is not a romanticized nostalgia but rather a gentle documentation of real, middle-century life. Each figure feels intentional - each coat, sled, and stroller adding to the mosaic of winter play and parental duty. From a woman placing a hat on a child, to a boy pulling a sled across the foreground, the painting rewards close viewing with micro-narratives of care, movement, and delight.
The composition is thoughtfully framed by leafless trees, their web-like branches echoing the spareness of winter and creating an elegant tension between vertical stillness and horizontal bustle. A crow perches high in a tree, a solitary contrast to the human warmth below. Despite the season, the atmosphere is not bleak - Sloan bathes the scene in a diffused, silvery light that softens the wintry gray sky and adds a gentle luminosity to the snow.
The work is oil and tempera on Masonite and is signed and dated in the lower left and verso. It is housed in its wonderful original frame by M. Toberoff
Co. in NYC.
Size:
24 inches tall by 30 inches wide (painting)
29.75 inches tall by 35.75 inches wide by 2 inches deep (frame)
Provenance:
Private collection;
Acquired from the above
About the artist:
Robert Smullyan Sloan was born Robert Seymour Smullyan in New York City on December 5, 1915. He studied art at the City College of New York, graduating in 1936. He also studied art and art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, specializing in connoisseurship. His first job, during the years of the Great Depression, was as a WPA artist. After a sojourn in Paris in 1938, he began a career as a commercial illustrator, doing covers and features for such magazines as Time, Coronet, and Collier’s. Shortly after the United States entered World War II, he was commissioned to do a poster for the U.S. Treasury’s War Bond campaign (“Doing All You Can, Brother?”), earning a Citation for Distinguished Service.
He was drafted into the army in 1943, and from 1943 to 1946 he illustrated training manuals for the Army Education Program. In 1944 he painted the watercolor “Station Hospital”, which toured nationally with the National Soldier Art Show and later was exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., winning third prize from among tens of thousands of entries. In 1948 his “Negro Soldier” (tempera and oil) was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery Bicentennial and at the Carnegie International, where it won Honorable Mention.
After his discharge from the army in 1946, he resumed his career in commercial art until the studio for which he worked fell victim to the McCarthy era. To support his family, he turn turned to other art-related pursuits, including portrait painting, teaching, and art restoration, and appraisal. From the 1960s to the early 1980s, Sloan owned and operated an art gallery in Manhattan, specializing in works by early American and European masters. However, he never abandoned his first love of easel painting. Sloan had one-man shows at Leger Galleries, in White Plains, New York; Capricorn Galleries, in Bethesda, Maryland; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, at Cornell University; and the Instituto de Bellas Artes, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In 1995 his painting “Overpopulation” won First Prize in the Modern Maturity Seasoned Eye National Art Competition. Sloan’s paintings are represented in many collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum, IBM, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, which purchased “Negro Soldier” for its permanent collection in 2006. He is listed in Who’s Who in American Art.
Condition: Very good overall condition. No apparent restoration. Original frame with typical wear from handling. It is ready to be displayed and enjoyed!
All photographs are taken in a well-lit environment using studio lights (set to a cooler temperature) to reveal as much detail as possible. Colors can vary depending on the temperature and strength of your lighting.
- Creator:Robert Smullyan Sloan (1915, American)
- Creation Year:1949
- Dimensions:Height: 29.75 in (75.57 cm)Width: 35.75 in (90.81 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Very good overall condition. No apparent restoration. Original frame with typical wear from handling. It is ready to be displayed and enjoyed!
- Gallery Location:Yardley, PA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2911217260632
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