John Sloan. 1871-1951.
Hell Hole. 1917. Etching and aquatint. Morse 186.ii. 7 3/8 x 9 3/8 (sheet 11 5/8 x 13 3/4).Printed on cream wove paper countermarked 'USA', on the full sheet with deckle edges. Signed, titled and annotated '100 proofs' in pencil by Sloan. $4,500.
The location is the back room of Wallace's at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street. The bar was called "The Golden Swan" but was nickm-named "Hell Hole." and was a gathering place for artists, writers, and Bohemians of Greenwich Village. The figure in the upper right is Eugene O'Neill. Sloan's painting, The City from Greenwich Village, includes a view of this corner, looking downtown toward the financial district, with the Sixth Avenue elevated train crossing the scene.
Sloan,came to New York in 1904 and worked for some time as a freelance illustrator. With Robert Henri, he organized an exhibition of a group of urban realist painters, known as “The Eight” or the “Ashcan School,” who challenged traditional notions of art. Having moved to the Village in 1912, Sloan lived with his wife Dolly at 240 West 4th Street and at 88 Washington Place. He also had an eleventh-floor studio at 35 Sixth Avenue, a triangular building on the southwest corner across the street from this garden.
During a clandestine midnight picnic at the top of the Washington Arch in nearby Washington Square Park on January 23, 1917, Sloan and a group of actors and artists including Marcel Duchamp went so far as to declare Greenwich Village its own independent nation. The scene depicted in Sloan’s Arch Conspirators (1917) is one of his many works that give a glimpse of city life during his time. In 1917, Sloan also made an etching of the interior of the Hell Hole, in which Eugene O’Neill is portrayed sitting at a table in the upper-right hand corner.
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