Reading in the Subway

John Sloan American

Not on view

Sloan, a chronicler of scenes observed on the streets of New York, wrote in his diary that the lines of seventeenth-century British poet John Suckling came to mind when he encountered a woman reading on a subway car. Suckling’s poem reads: "Her feet beneath her petticoat / Like little mice peeped in and out, / As if they feared the light." The advertisement behind the woman’s head includes an amusing detail, publicizing Sloan’s liniment—a lotion meant to relieve hand pain.

Reading in the Subway, John Sloan (American, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania 1871–1951 Hanover, New Hampshire), Etching

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