"I’ll just put down my belief in the woman’s vote here in black and white": John Sloan's Support of Suffrage
John and Dolly Sloan, July 10 John Butler Yeats (1839–1922) Graphite on paper 18 11/16 × 14 5/16 in. (47.5 × 36.4 cm) Delaware Art Museum, Gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1977
Diary entry for November 15, 1909 John Sloan Manuscript Collection, Helen Farr Sloan Library and Archives, Delaware Art Museum
John Sloan's first wife, Dolly, was an ardent suffrage advocate, and the couple was active in radical socialist and leftist politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In a diary entry dated December 6, 1908, Sloan wrote: "I feel that it would be well to give them votes," and on November 15, 1909, he noted: "I'll just put down my belief in the woman’s vote here in black and white."
Click on Sloan's diary page to see his words in full.
Dolly Sloan at a Socialist Party rally, New York, c. 1911 Unknown photographer John Sloan Manuscript Collection, Helen Farr Sloan Library and Archives, Delaware Art Museum
Dolly can be seen at the far right of the photograph wearing a hat and white collar.