SUNDAY REVIEW / JOHN SLOAN’S IMMORTAL PUBS

“HELL HOLE”: A BAR ROOM TIME CAPSULE 

John Sloan’s 1917 etching (above) "Hell Hole" captures a corner of old Manhattan that no longer exists but once held court at 4th Street and Sixth Avenue: The Golden Swan Café, a weathered Irish saloon known among locals and regulars as “The Hell Hole.” 

A watering hole for the down-and-out, the near-famous, and the truly lost, it was also, for a time, a regular haunt of playwright Eugene O’Neill—depicted quietly at the upper right of Sloan’s frame. 

 Created using etching and aquatint, the print is a textbook example of Sloan’s Ashcan School roots—an unromantic, observational style that gave weight to city life below the skyline. 

The room is crowded, but nothing’s hidden. 

Selfie, 1890 John Sloan

The bar sags with regulars. Figures lean into each other, either mid-rant or mid-collapse. There’s no glamour, only routine: drinks poured, bodies slumped, an air of smoke, sweat, and something bordering on defeat. 

 Sloan wasn’t looking for heroes or villains. He was drawing what he saw. And what he saw was a slice of urban life too often ignored by polite society or idealized by later nostalgia. 

In that sense, Hell Hole isn’t just an artwork—it’s documentation. The aquatint process gives the piece a murky, soaked-in texture that suits the subject. This was not a bright place. 

It had its code, its clientele, and, in O’Neill’s case, its ghosts. For the playwright, the saloon served as both a hiding place and a well of material. Sloan catches him before the legend, anonymous amid the clutter, a writer watching the room instead of commanding it. 

 Hell Hole remains a sharp and durable portrait of a city always on the edge of reinvention. The saloon is long gone, the block redeveloped, but Sloan’s etching holds the room together, if only in black ink. 

ANOTHER BAR SCENE BY JOHN SLOAN:

McSorley's Bar, 1912

Barroom Realism: 

John Sloan’s 1912 painting "McSorley’s Bar" doesn’t try to impress—it simply shows you the room. Six men, two bartenders, a wall of portraits, a couple of mugs in motion. No drama, no romance. 

Just the hum of daily life inside a New York saloon that’s been poured into over since Lincoln. What makes it work is Sloan’s refusal to dress it up. The colors are muted, the figures worn-in, the bar cluttered like any real one. The man leaning over his beer isn’t posing for art history. 

He’s listening to a story or avoiding one. Sloan gives us that space—private, public, functional. This isn’t a scene of nostalgia or critique. It’s observation. It’s how a bar looked and felt before neon, before jukeboxes, before marketing. It holds its ground. 

Like McSorley’s itself, it doesn’t care if you get it. No gloss, no gimmick. Just a saloon, a painter, and a moment that still feels like it might spill into yours. It’s a fine example of the Ashcan School because it doesn’t elevate the ordinary—it lets the ordinary elevate itself.