May 11, 2023 - Sale 2636

Sale 2636 - Lot 310

Price Realized: $ 938
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
JOHN SLOAN
Fourteenth Street, the Wigwam.

Etching, 1928. 249x178 mm; 9 3/4x7 inches, full margins. Seventh state (of 7). Edition of 110 (from an intended edition of 100). Signed, titled and inscribed "100 proofs" in pencil, lower margin. A superb, dark impression, with the artist's tack holes for drying at the extreme sheet edges.

Sloan's (1871-1951) depiction of a crowded New York street outside the headquarters of Tammany Hall, a fraternal society formed in 1789 that became a champion of the working class and was crucial to helping immigrants, especially the Irish, rise in politics in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The society was originally named for Chief Tamanend, a leader of the Lenape people during the colonial era, and its entirely white membership appropriated native terms, such as "wigwam," into club lingo. By the time of Sloan's etching, the Tammany Society was a strong supporter of the Democratic Party but also known for its endemic corruption. Morse 235.