THE STORY OF AN ARTIST
Allan Edward Sloan was born in Cleveland, Ohio in September 1902, one of seven children in the family of local businessman. At an early age, he decided he wanted to become an artist and often skipped school to ride the streetcar to the city outskirts to do sketches rather than his homework.
His father finally gave in to his artistic impulses by furnishing him with the funds to study art, first at the Cleveland School of Art, then at the National Academy of Design in New York City, and in Paris in the late 1920s. While in New York, he was introduced to the art colony in Woodstock, New York where he studied for a time with John Carlson and also in Provincetown, Massachusetts with Charles Hawthorne.
Allan’s first ambition was to become a portrait painter, an area where he hoped to earn his living. Many of his early subjects were members of his family and close friends. His earliest works were large oils, including a number of portraits made while studying in Paris in 1926 and 1927. However, the depression of the 1930s ruined the market for large paintings of people likely to pay important sums to be immortalized by an aspiring painter, so he turned his focus to pastel drawings of children, which could be done in sittings lasting less than one hour and for which parents would be willing to pay about $75. Allan married Charlotte King of Cleveland in 1930 and lived for the early years in a house in Shaker Heights owned by his father with his other struggling siblings. His two sons were born there, but Allan longed to set up shop in Woodstock. There he figured he could tap the New York City market for his children’s drawings, since he had a number of successful exhibits of his work at galleries in Cleveland, Washington D.C., and New York. In the late 1930s, he was furnished with a studio in Saks Fifth Avenue in New York where he was installed during the Christmas season to produce these drawings for a variety of clients. This led to an offer in 1940 to set up a studio at Saks in Beverly Hills California and he and his family relocated there in 1941 and were there when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The onset of World War II put on hold Allan’s career a children’s portrait specialist and he move back to Cleveland where he found employment as a production illustrator for factories producing the tools of war.
When the war was over, Allan and the family moved back to Woodstock where they bought an old farm house with a view of Overlook Mountain that was to be his home and studio until he died in 1999. He tried to revive his children’s portrait business, but the post war economy was more geared to photography than to drawings. His later years were devoted to landscape painting of scenes he enjoyed, not to seeking commissions from a public that was moving away from traditional art of the kind he practiced.
Allan Edward Sloan was born in Cleveland, Ohio in September 1902, one of seven children in the family of local businessman. At an early age, he decided he wanted to become an artist and often skipped school to ride the streetcar to the city outskirts to do sketches rather than his homework.
His father finally gave in to his artistic impulses by furnishing him with the funds to study art, first at the Cleveland School of Art, then at the National Academy of Design in New York City, and in Paris in the late 1920s. While in New York, he was introduced to the art colony in Woodstock, New York where he studied for a time with John Carlson and also in Provincetown, Massachusetts with Charles Hawthorne.
Allan’s first ambition was to become a portrait painter, an area where he hoped to earn his living. Many of his early subjects were members of his family and close friends. His earliest works were large oils, including a number of portraits made while studying in Paris in 1926 and 1927. However, the depression of the 1930s ruined the market for large paintings of people likely to pay important sums to be immortalized by an aspiring painter, so he turned his focus to pastel drawings of children, which could be done in sittings lasting less than one hour and for which parents would be willing to pay about $75. Allan married Charlotte King of Cleveland in 1930 and lived for the early years in a house in Shaker Heights owned by his father with his other struggling siblings. His two sons were born there, but Allan longed to set up shop in Woodstock. There he figured he could tap the New York City market for his children’s drawings, since he had a number of successful exhibits of his work at galleries in Cleveland, Washington D.C., and New York. In the late 1930s, he was furnished with a studio in Saks Fifth Avenue in New York where he was installed during the Christmas season to produce these drawings for a variety of clients. This led to an offer in 1940 to set up a studio at Saks in Beverly Hills California and he and his family relocated there in 1941 and were there when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The onset of World War II put on hold Allan’s career a children’s portrait specialist and he move back to Cleveland where he found employment as a production illustrator for factories producing the tools of war.
When the war was over, Allan and the family moved back to Woodstock where they bought an old farm house with a view of Overlook Mountain that was to be his home and studio until he died in 1999. He tried to revive his children’s portrait business, but the post war economy was more geared to photography than to drawings. His later years were devoted to landscape painting of scenes he enjoyed, not to seeking commissions from a public that was moving away from traditional art of the kind he practiced.
