Sloan’s etchings characteristically emphasise the visual texture of city life. Across the portfolio he uses the etched line, and the visual textures it creates, to emphasise the difference between the lived, affectual, experience of the city, and its existence as a physical mass.
In Man, Wife, and Child, the thick, dark outlines of the husband and wife suggest the intense energy and movement of their embrace. Behind them, the dark tenement room lies in dim shadow, the dense cross-hatching heavily suggesting the indistinct, oppressive presence of the city, and juxtaposing the vitality of its inhabitants. Similarly, in The Little Bride, the bride, depicted through light, curling strokes, embodies a fleeting movement mirrored in the confetti thrown behind her. In this way, her figure contrasts the driving linearity of the cross-hatched steps down which she descends, emerging from the rough solidity of the engraved city as a figure of human optimism.
A similar contrast is observable in Roofs, Summer Nights. The gentle languorous curves of the sleepers’ bodies appear in blank, illuminated opposition to the rough heavily etched darkness which surrounds and engulfs them. Through these oppositions, through etched line and texture, Sloan creates and sustains a profound sense of shared human isolation in the city.
William Bateman (MA English Literature and Culture)
New York City Life: John Sloan's prints 