63
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LOUIS B. SLOAN (1932 - 2008)
Untitled (Winter Landscape).
Oil on canvas, 1958. 914x1118 mm; 36x44 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: the artist, Philadelphia; Ethel V. Ashton, Philadelphia; thence by descent to the current
owner. Ashton was a Philadelphia artist and librarian at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art for
many years. She was a mentor to Louis Sloan and many other young artists at the Academy. She was
also a friend and classmate of the artist Alice Neel.
This minimalist landscape is an excellent, early tonal painting by this influential Philadelphia
landscape artist. Sloan was in between being a painting student and a professor at PAFA when he
painted this dark winter scene. Other early landscapes of his, like
Gathering Storm
, circa 1961, share
a similar somber palette.This is the largest and only the second significant 1950s work by this artist
to come to auction since Swann Galleries sold
Self-Portrait
, 1956, on October 8, 2009.
[6,000/9,000]