AUDIO DESCRIPTION
SUNDAY, WOMEN DRYING THEIR HAIR
CITY AMBIENCE/EL TRAIN
In the early years of the 20th century, the artist John Sloan had a studio in Greenwich Village at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Cornelia Street. An elevated train ran down the Avenue nearby. His favorite subjects were scenes of everyday life from the streets and backyards and rooftops of New York. Like this scene that he spied from his studio window of three young women on the flat roof of a tenement building. It’s an oil painting on canvas about three feet wide and two feet high, and it’s titled Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair. Sloan was a founding member of the Ashcan School of artists. Today we might use the term trashcan. Critics derisively used the term ashcan because artists like Sloan chose to paint scenes of everyday life just as he experienced it, directly and without idealizing it. Sloan described Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair, as quote “another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street.”
AMBIENCE AND WOMENS’ VOICES IN BACKGROUND
It’s a Sunday morning, usually the only day of leisure for working class New York women, when they could wash their hair and their clothes for the coming week. In the background on the right hangs a line of white shirts or blouses, flapping in the breeze. The women have hung out the laundry and are chatting while letting the sun and wind dry their hair. The three women, probably in their 20s, are relaxing in the summer heat, enjoying each other’s company without men around.
One woman with light brown hair stands on the right, dressed in a white chemise or dress, ankle length, with bare arms. She is bending to her right shaking out her long hair to help it dry. Two others sit on a low brick wall that separates their tenement roof from the next building’s roof. On the left sits a red haired woman, wearing an ankle length green skirt and white blouse. Her back is arched as she also shakes out her long hair behind her. To her left in the center of the painting sits a woman with short black hair. She wears a pale green top and light grey skirt and has one shoe casually off and the other almost off as she leans back against a red brick wall of chimneys. She doesn’t need to dry her short hair and is chatting with her friends.
DISTANT BOAT HORN ON THE RIVER
At the top of the painting behind the red brick wall and the clothesline we can see in the background other buildings of 1912 New York, brown and gray, only one or two taller than the five-story tenement roof. On the left a few clouds of white smoke drift up from a smokestack.
Sloan shows us the women as unselfconscious. The roof is a place they can be themselves, unrestricted, just as their hair is temporarily free from the tight buns or braiding required by the rules of proper public dress at the turn of the 20th century.
SUNDAY, WOMEN DRYING THEIR HAIR
CITY AMBIENCE/EL TRAIN
In the early years of the 20th century, the artist John Sloan had a studio in Greenwich Village at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Cornelia Street. An elevated train ran down the Avenue nearby. His favorite subjects were scenes of everyday life from the streets and backyards and rooftops of New York. Like this scene that he spied from his studio window of three young women on the flat roof of a tenement building. It’s an oil painting on canvas about three feet wide and two feet high, and it’s titled Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair. Sloan was a founding member of the Ashcan School of artists. Today we might use the term trashcan. Critics derisively used the term ashcan because artists like Sloan chose to paint scenes of everyday life just as he experienced it, directly and without idealizing it. Sloan described Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair, as quote “another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street.”
AMBIENCE AND WOMENS’ VOICES IN BACKGROUND
It’s a Sunday morning, usually the only day of leisure for working class New York women, when they could wash their hair and their clothes for the coming week. In the background on the right hangs a line of white shirts or blouses, flapping in the breeze. The women have hung out the laundry and are chatting while letting the sun and wind dry their hair. The three women, probably in their 20s, are relaxing in the summer heat, enjoying each other’s company without men around.
One woman with light brown hair stands on the right, dressed in a white chemise or dress, ankle length, with bare arms. She is bending to her right shaking out her long hair to help it dry. Two others sit on a low brick wall that separates their tenement roof from the next building’s roof. On the left sits a red haired woman, wearing an ankle length green skirt and white blouse. Her back is arched as she also shakes out her long hair behind her. To her left in the center of the painting sits a woman with short black hair. She wears a pale green top and light grey skirt and has one shoe casually off and the other almost off as she leans back against a red brick wall of chimneys. She doesn’t need to dry her short hair and is chatting with her friends.
DISTANT BOAT HORN ON THE RIVER
At the top of the painting behind the red brick wall and the clothesline we can see in the background other buildings of 1912 New York, brown and gray, only one or two taller than the five-story tenement roof. On the left a few clouds of white smoke drift up from a smokestack.
Sloan shows us the women as unselfconscious. The roof is a place they can be themselves, unrestricted, just as their hair is temporarily free from the tight buns or braiding required by the rules of proper public dress at the turn of the 20th century.