Louis Sloan: a ‘national treasure’ at Hahn Gallery

By MARIE FOWLER

If we designated our citizens with extraordinary talents as “living national treasures” in the way the Japanese do, surely Philadelphia native son and artist Louis Sloan would indeed be one!

Sloan’s landscapes on view at the Hahn Gallery in Chestnut Hill through September 29, are intimate in scale, glowing against the gallery walls like Faberge eggs in a jewel box.

Sloan, who is “70-something,” paints in Bucks County along the Delaware and beside the falls on Wissahickon Creek. Passionate about the Catskills, he travels there every autumn when the leaves hit their peak of color. He captures foggy mist rising from the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Virginia and perfectly recreates the blues and greens of the ocean at the Jersey shore, as well as pearly corals and pinks reflected in the sand. “This was one of those silvery days,” he remarks, pointing out a landscape with tiny migrating birds streaking across the picture plane. In Arizona, saguaro cactus stand sentinel against a rosy sky.

“I love all the seasons. I’ve painted outside in seven or eight degree weather,” the artist confesses, indicating one of his snow scenes. When working outdoors, Sloan gets his impressions down quickly. Often, he’ll sketch individual leaves or twigs and return to his studio, scattering them about, as if to bring the outside in, before setting to work on a large-scale composition.

“My grandfather was an artist,” Sloan remarks, “and my oldest brother painted. We had art books in our house. I was exposed very young to masters like Michelangelo.” Sloan , who has no children of his own, was the fifth of 13 children;  his parents were very approving of his penchant for art.

He grew up in West Philadelphia at a time, he notes, when “you showed any signs of talent, the public school system supported you. I painted with high school students when I was in elementary school.” Sloan still remembers sitting in a classroom when his teacher went to the blackboard and “drew a lollipop tree,” instructing the children to follow suit. She was astonished to find young Sloan drawing a realistic tree complete with branches and leaves. District art supervisor Myra Norbond was one of the first in Sloan’s corner. Mrs. Norbond celebrated her 95th birthday a few weeks ago, and Sloan was at the party. Another elementary teacher took art classes herself to help the promising young student and gave him his first set of oils.

Sloan’s formal training began at Fleisher when he was about 11 or 12. “If I didn’t have car fare, I’d walk from West Philly to Catharine Street,” he remembers. The school system “sent me, and they warned me that I’d be spit on and called names. But they insisted I was to stay there.” So, the youngster went and put up with unspeakable hostility and humiliation. “My expression wouldn’t change,” Sloan says, “but my insides were churning.”

In 1962, Sloan was the first African American instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, as well as the first African American on staff at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he worked in the conservation department. He relates his experience at the staff table in the cafeteria at the Art Museum. “They talked over me and around me as though I wasn’t there.” So the next day, he settled for a seat at the counter, until conservator Theodor Siegl insisted Sloan return to the table, promising everything would “be all right.” In retrospect, Sloan realizes that “those people didn’t know how to deal with me — with an African American. Even their maids were Irish.”

Sloan “conserved”(maintained physical quality) Academy legend Thomas Eakins’ Gross Clinic. “I have the patience of Job,” he laughs, “and a steady hand.” He still does some restoration, but prefers to keep it to a minimum, so as not to interfere with his own work.

In 1963, Sloan won a Guggenheim prize and elected to travel around the United States for a year, visiting students and friends. His parents pleaded with him not to go south, but, as he insists, “I was there to see the South, not to change it.” He took the advice of others and kept to college campuses, “which were much more liberal.” Still, Sloan remembers, “I’d never seen such hate in people’s faces. But at least,” he concedes, “Southerners let you know where you stand.” He goes on to relate incidents where people were “sneaky, really smiling, when they apologized for not having any vacancies,” even though their parking lots stood empty. Other times, he’d be relegated to a room at the back held especially for “people like me.”

A lifetime of prejudice would have embittered a lesser man, but Sloan is possessed of a passion for living and painting and seeing the world.

“I enjoyed my years at the Academy, but it bothers me that we are turning out so many artists who can write and talk about art, but not make art. If you cannot express yourself in painting, you should take up writing. Art is a gift from God; no one can give you that and no one can take it away, either. But you must have drive and dedication,” he warns. “In teaching, I could tell in the first week which students would succeed and which would not. And I was nearly always right.

“Great painters all understand the same things,” this consummate teacher explains patiently, and one instantly sees why he has remained in touch with his former students. Not only is Sloan incredibly gifted as an artist, but he is likewise talented at educating students in composition and color, in texture and paint quality. “It’s their personalities,” he continues, speaking of the masters, “that makes them different.” He is insistent that his students study the masters’ command of the formal elements, not their style. This is what he did, and he doesn’t really paint like any of them. He paints like Louis Sloan, and that’s quite extraordinary in its own right.

Still, he grins and passes on the tidbit he got from a former teacher himself: “If you’re going to be influenced by somebody, be influenced by somebody great.”

“Students don’t visit museums enough,” he lamented, noting that reproductions cannot convey texture and “the color is way off.”

Speaking of the current controversy in the Philadelphia school system about what to do with art works the district owns, Sloan adds that “they have some of mine, too, at Shaw Junior High and Ben Franklin High, but a lot has been lost.” He feels the works should be registered and then redistributed among the schools. Sloan worked on a similar project for Bryn Mawr College so authorities could keep track of their collection while still keeping it available to the students.

Sloan is a master colorist, but he’s proud of his brushwork, as well, citing his admiration of French realist Courbet. He attributes much of his depth of color to his practice of tinting the gesso. Using a quick-drying medium, he is able to manipulate thick layers of pigment and overlay feathery branches without muddling the work.

“I feel like I am just getting into what I really want to paint,” Sloan remarks. “I have passed the technical point, and now my mind is on what I want to say.”

Fiercely independent, the painter talks about the big-time New York gallery owner who advised him to “paint more of this and of that, and we’ll make a fortune.” Sloan is that purest of artists, who seems not to have a commercial bone in his body. Each of his compositions stands on its own, a portrait of a moment, not part of a formula-driven series. “I never took jobs that interfered with my art,” he says. “I worked in garages or anywhere I didn’t have to think, so when I got home, I could paint.”

And what’s next for an artist who is allegedly retired? Sloan quotes the French master Henri Matisse. At the end of his life, Matisse felt “he’d just scratched the surface and wished he had another life to life. That’s an artist’s life.”

The Hahn Gallery, at 8439 Germantown Ave., may be reached at 215-247-8439 or at www.hahngallery.com.