Louis B. Sloan

Louis B. Sloan (1932 – 2008) was an American landscape artist, teacher and conservator. He was the first Black full professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and a conservator for the academy and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Although he painted urban neighborhoods and other cityscapes, he was mostly known for his plein-air paintings.

Early life and education Louis Baynard Sloan was born on June 28, 1932, in West Philadelphia, to parents Matthew and Anna Mae Sloan. His father lost his job as an auto mechanic during the Depression and then gave piano lessons to feed the family of 12 children (he was no. 5). His mother was a housewife who gave piano lessons until her family began to grow.

Sloan's older brother Beauford sparked his interest in art at an early age. His sixth-grade teacher at Alexander Wilson Elementary School, Mrs. Cordelia McKrantz, encouraged his drawing by buying him his first oil paints. "That set of oils was what really shaped my life, directed it into art," he said years later. He sold his first painting at age 14.

One of his professional mentors was the artist Julius Bloch, then a teacher at PAFA, who saw Sloan's works in the Gimbels Exhibition of Student Art shows and urged him to attend PAFA. For the department store's 1953 competition, an oil painting by the 19-year-old Sloan was featured in an ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer announcing the exhibition.

Another supporter was artist Jack Bookbinder, director of art programs for the School District of Philadelphia, who encouraged him to study at the Samuel S. Fleischer Art Memorial. (He taught at Fleischer in 1960. ) He also took painting classes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A child prodigy, Sloan in 1951 drew an on-the-spot "creative picture" as another young man played the piano during an annual concert on youths and the arts. At his graduation ceremony at Ben Franklin High School in 1953, he won an award for an outstanding work in art. He was considered one of the best students to graduate from the school.

Student at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Sloan won a scholarship to attend PAFA. He became a star student at the academy, racking up several major awards. He attended PAFA from 1953 to 1957, graduating with a certificate. Early on, a local group associated with the school district gave him money for carfare and supplies.

His awards at PAFA:

1954 – student-show prize-winner, annual Fellowship (alumni) exhibition 1955 – Board of Directors' Prize 1955 – Henry J. Thouron Prize 1955 – Catherine Grant Memorial Prize for best landscape. This was the first year of the award. 1957 – student-show prize-winner, annual Fellowship (alumni) exhibition

In 1955, Sloan's painting "Backyards," completed that year, was gifted to PAFA by a patron. In 1956, he painted a self-portrait of him standing in front of rowhouses bathed in light, now in the PAFA collection.

During his second year at PAFA in 1954, Sloan exhibited at the Red Door Gallery, and again in 1957 as part of an exhibit by PAFA, the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and the Philadelphia Museum and School of industrial Art (now University of the Arts). This was the first in a series of exhibits shown in the West Oak Lane neighborhood of the best works by graduating students of the three schools.

The years beyond PAFA The early 1960s were just as fruitful for Sloan, who became PAFA's first Black full-time faculty member in 1962. In 1963, Sloan won a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship to travel in the United States. He chose to go South, leaving in the fall of that year. In 1969, he was among 100 Black artists from across the country to participate in the exhibit “Afro-American Artists 1800-1969” sponsored by the School District of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Civic Center Museum. It included works by some of the country’s top artists, including Horace Pippin, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Jacob Lawrence, Benny Andrews, Roland Ayers, Romare Bearden, Avel de Knight, Barkley Hendricks, Paul Keene, Raymond Saunders, Ellen Powell Tiberino, Ed Wilson, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Joshua Johnson. In 2019, the Noyes Museum of Art in Stockton, NJ, included Sloan's works in a group exhibition titled "Driving While Black". The catalog told the story of what he encountered during his year-long trip in a Volkswagen van in the midst of the civil rights movement. Sloan experienced racial prejudice and segregation. He was forbidden from staying in hotels and motels, and was confronted with "Whites Only" signs. He had to find Black neighborhoods that would accommodate him. In 1969 at La Salle University’s Black Student Union, he was among 28 artists in the African American Arts Festival, including Howard N. Watson, Benjamin Britt, Humbert Howard, Barbara Bullock and Paul Keene. In 1975, he won the Earth II Purchase Award during an exhibit sponsored by the Junior League of Philadelphia at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. His painting "A Field of Daisies" was purchased by Friends of Earth II for the hospital, which each May celebrated daisy days as a fundraiser.

Sloan was an assistant conservator of paintings at PAFA in the early 1960s and the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1961until 1980.

In 1985 he performed conservation work on the 19th-century painting "The Phoenix" by African American artist David Bustill Bowser for the Philadelphia Alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. The painting had been found in storage at the Atwater Kent Museum.

Early in his career, Sloan was involved with the Pyramid Club.

Sloan as teacher and mentor Sloan taught at PAFA from 1962 to 1997. He painted what some consider one of his best works "Spirit" at the Adirondack camp there. He would also take his students to spots in the Philadelphia region. He had been taking these outdoor trips since the 1960s, sketching and fishing in the summer and painting from the sketches in the wintertime. Sloan loved the outdoors. "Being outside is wonderful," he told a reporter.

Sloan as a "Black" artist Black art historian and collector Lewis Tanner Moore described Sloan as a "quiet giant of American art". In 1994, Sloan was included in a photo display of the lives and works of 10 local Black artists at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. A Landscape and Still Life Prize was created in his name at PAFA in 1997.

Sloan's work was included in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum.

Collections Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts La Salle University Art Museum Sheldon Museum of Art Woodmere Art Museum Philadelphia Museum of Art Tarboro (NC) Arts Commission Rutgers University-Camden Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art

Exhibitions

Red Door Gallery, 1954, 1957 Cheltenham Center for the Arts, 1962 Peale House Galleries, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1964, 1967 Samuel S. Fleischer Art Memorial, 1966 Lee Cultural Center, 1967 Cultural Arts Center, Ocean City (NJ), 1968 Afro-American Artists 1800-1969, Philadelphia Civic Center Museum, 1969 Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1969 Afro-American Art Festival, La Salle College, 1969 Vendo Nubes Gallery, 1972 Millville Public Library, 1972 American Painters in Paris, 1975 Reese Palley Fine Arts Gallery, Atlantic City, 1975 Woodmere Art Museum, 1978, 1980, 2014, 2015 Deshong Museum, Widener University, 1981 Olympia Galleries LTD, Atlanta, 1982 Gloucester County College, 1987 Pittman Memorial Gallery, Tarboro (NC), 1987 Moore College of Art & Design, 1997 African American Museum in Philadelphia, 2002 Noyes Museum of Art, 2019