Party Scene

This quickly rendered ink drawing of a woman in a ball gown surrounded by a group of admirers was perhaps done at Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Opera House or Academy of Music, where Henri and John Sloan would bring their sketch pads to record the spectacle in brush and ink, in the Japanese style. Henri and his friends enjoyed active social lives, attending such performances as well as carousing at raucous parties in one another’s studios, staging their own amateur theatricals, and meeting for late-night dinners.