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.