LOUIS B. SLOAN (1932 - 2008)
Blue Wild Flower.

Oil on linen canvas, 1971. 914x1067 mm; 36x42 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.

Exhibited: Annual Exhibition of the Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia with the label on the frame back, supplying the title.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York (circa 1971-74), thence by descent private collection, Arizona.

Louis B. Sloan's Blue Wild Flower is an almost abstract painting of closely observed flora, creating an large, undulating field of colorful brushstrokes. Sloan was an avid plein air landscape painter who painted pastoral scenes in the rural areas outside Philadelphia. He took his students at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on annual painting trips to the Catskills, the Delaware Water Gap and the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania, and the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Sloan's 1972 Self-Portrait in Landscape, which embodies his love of nature, depicting himself surrounded by a sunny field of flowers, is in the permanent collection of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.