Louis B. Sloan: A Particular Vision

Louis B. Sloan (1932-2008) was a prominent figure in the Philadelphia art community. An alumnus of Fleisher Art School and PAFA, Sloan taught still-life, landscape, portrait and figure painting classes at PAFA from 1962 to 1997, and he worked in the conservation department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1961 to 1980. 
 
The recipient of many prestigious awards including PAFA's third annual Distinguished Alumni Award and the Jennie Sesnan Gold Medal, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, the Emily Lowe Grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Van Der Zee Award from Philadelphia's Brandywine Workshop. Sloan also received tributes in the halls of government from Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell, Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode, and most recently on November 4, 2008, from Mayor Michael A. Nutter.

The exhibition, curated by Philadelphia art collector, Lewis Tanner Moore, displayed over thirty works spanning Sloan's long career. Early works include Backyards (1955), painted during Sloan's student days at PAFA. The painting captures a moment in his West Philadelphia neighborhood and "that glorious light that glows," indicative of Sloan's work, particularly his landscape paintings. While Sloan's cityscapes favor a more somber palette as seen in Early Streetscape and Gathering Storm over Philadelphia, Sloan's landscape paintings embrace brighter colors to emphasize the varying light and atmospheric conditions as seen in Moon Light (1978) and Lifting Fog in the Poconos (1980). Landscape painting was his true passion, and it is in paintings like Frost Valley in the Catskills (1995), that his great technical skills, unique artistic vision and masterful rendering of nature are brought together.