The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (449 page)

 
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(1868–1932).
German painter and graphic artist, with
Corinth
and
Liebermann
one of the leading artists in his country to show the impact of
Impressionism
. He was born in Bavaria and studied in Munich, then at the
Académie
Julian, Paris, 1889–90. In 1901 he settled in Berlin, where he taught at the Academy from 1917. Although he took over from the Impressionists their fresh, bright palette, he never adopted their fragmentation of colours, and his work always retained something of the Bavarian
Baroque
tradition. His loose handling of paint, bold effects of light, and energetic sense of movement give his work great dash, and he was much in demand as a decorative artist. He also made a name for himself as a book illustrator. As a painter his work included landscapes, portraits, and scenes of contemporary life; he loved the theatre and is perhaps best known for portrayals of the singer Francisco d'Andrade in the role of Don Juan. He also painted religious pictures, his last work being a fresco of
Golgotha
in the Friedenskirche at Ludwigshafen (1932).

 
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(1871–1951)
. American painter and graphic artist. During the 1890s he worked as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia, and he started painting seriously in 1896, influenced by Robert
Henri
. In 1904 he settled permanently in New York, where he and Henri were among the members of The
Eight
. Sloan was the most political member of the Eight and as well as finding his most characteristic subjects among everyday lower-class New York life, he did illustrations for socialist periodicals, including
The Masses
, of which he was editor from 1912 to 1916. However, he was not interested in using his art for what he called ‘socialist propaganda’ and he resigned from the magazine after a dispute over policy. His paintings are generally marked by a warm humanity, but he could also be sharply satirical and occasionally expressed himself in a totally different vein, as in
Wake of the Ferry
(Phillips Coll., Washington, 1907), which has a romantic, melancholy mood. He taught at the
Art Students League
1914–30 and 1930–8, his students including such distinguished figures as Alexander
Calder
, Barnett
Newman
, and David
Smith
. In 1939 he published an autobiographical-critical book,
The Gist of Art
.

 
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Slodtz
.

Family of French sculptors, designers, and decorators. They were
Sébastien
(1655–1726), who was Flemish by birth, and his three sons:
Sébastien-Antoine
(
c.
1695–1754),
Paul-Ambroise
(1702–58), and
René-Michel
called Michel-Ange (1705–64). They all worked for the Menus Plaisirs (the office that designed costumes, festivities, etc. for the court), as did another son of Sébastien, the painter
Dominique Slodtz
(1711–64), and Michel-Ange was the only member of the family to attain great distinction as a sculptor. From 1728 to 1747 he was in Rome, where his admiration for
Michelangelo
won him his nickname. His best-known work is
St Bruno
(St Peter's, Rome, 1744), which shows the nervous sensitivity of his style. In France he made several major tombs, notably that of Languet de Gergy (S. Sulpice , Paris, completed 1753), which shows the influence of
Bernini
in its
Baroque
rhetoric and use of different coloured marbles.
Houdon
was Slodtz's most important pupil.

 
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(d. 1405/6).
Netherlandish sculptor, active mainly in Dijon. He was the greatest sculptor of his time in northern Europe and a figure of enormous importance in the transition from
International Gothic
to a more weighty and naturalistic style. Sluter is first mentioned in Brussels (
c.
1379) in a document that says he came from Haarlem. In 1385 he entered the service of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in his capital, Dijon. All of Sluter's surviving work was done for Philip, and almost all of it remains in Dijon. For the Chartreuse de Champmol, a monastery founded by Philip , Sluter carved figures for the portal of the chapel in the early 1390s, and made a fountain group, the only part of which to survive intact is the base, known as the
Well of Moses
(1395–1403). The monastery was destroyed during the French Revolution, and the portal and the
Well of Moses
are now part of the psychiatric hospital that occupies its site. The Well features six full-length figures of prophets of monumental dignity; they convey an intense sense of physical presence, and as character studies rival the prophets of
Donatello
, which they preceded by about 20 years. Originally Sluter's figures were painted (by
Malouel
) and the figure of Jeremiah is known to have worn copper spectacles, the record of payment for which still survives. Of the Calvary group that surmounted the Well (symbolizing the ‘Fountain of Life’) only fragments survive in the Archaeological Museum in Dijon; they include the head and torso of the figure of Christ—one of Sluter's noblest works, in which the expression of suffering stoically endured is deeply moving. Sluter's last work was the tomb of Philip the Bold, begun in 1404 and unfinished at the sculptor's death (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon). Most of the work on it was carried out by Sluter 's nephew and assistant Claus de Werve, but the figures of
pleurants
(weepers or mourners) that form a frieze around the sarcophagus are from the master's own hand, and although they are only about 40 cm. high they possess massive solemnity. They show Sluter's extraordinary ability to use the heavy folds of drapery for expressive effect; indeed some of the mourners are so completely enveloped in their voluminous cowls that they are in effect nothing else but drapery. Sluter's influence was enormous—on painters as well as sculptors. The emphatic plasticity of the
Master of Flémalle's
figures, for example, has Sluter as its source, and in his
Entombment
(Courtauld Inst., London,
c.
1410/20), which stands at the head of the Early Netherlandish tradition of painting, the angel that wipes away a tear with the back of his hand is a quotation from the
Well of Moses
.