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Sunday Afternoon in Union Square

At the turn of the century, a group of painters, later termed the Ashcan School, was inspired by the city’s diverse population and popular institutions. In particular, John Sloan recorded and celebrated the ways in which New Yorkers dealt with living in a new, heterogeneous environment populated by strangers. In this 1912 painting, for example, he showed how public spaces such as city parks offered people opportunities to watch and assess one another.

Source: John Sloan, 1912, oil on canvas, 16 1/4 × 32 inches—Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. Bequest of George Otis Hamlin.

Who Built America? An Open Educational Resource has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and funding from The Ford Foundation, Digital Scholar, and the City University of New York Central Office of Library Services. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Open Educational Resource, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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