"I’ll just put down my belief in the woman’s vote here in black and white": John Sloan's Support of Suffrage

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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
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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." 

You can click on Sloan's diary page to see his words in full.

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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
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Dolly can be seen at the far right of the photograph wearing a hat and white collar.