Woman and Child on the Roof

John Sloan

1914

An etching in which John Sloan quietly observes a working‑class mother and child resting on a tenement rooftop, aiming to capture the everyday intimacy of urban life.

What strikes you is the close, lived-in space—Sloan’s dense, sketchy cross-hatching presses the mother’s tired curve and the child’s restless legs into a shadowed nook beneath hanging laundry.

Made during the Ashcan School’s focus on urban realism, this print uses the immediacy of etching to make visible ordinary city dwellers and to expand American art’s attention to working‑class domestic life.

Palette

Art Terms

Etching Print Intaglio Figurative Cityscape Social Realism Urbanization

Exhibitions

Romantic Painting in America

1943

American Prints, 1960–1985

1987

New Acquisitions: American Painting and Sculpture

1941

American Prints: 1913–1963

1974