Helen Farr Sloan

Helen Farr Sloan
Helen at the Easel, 1947 by John Sloan
Born	Helen Farr (1911-02-24)February 24, 1911 New York City, New York
Died	December 13, 2005(2005-12-13) (aged 94) Wilmington, Delaware
Nationality	American
Education	John Sloan
Alma mater	Art Students League of New York
Known for	Painting, philanthropy
Style	Realistic, expressionistic
Spouse(s)	John Sloan

Helen Farr Sloan (24 February 1911 – 13 December 2005) was a patron of the arts, educator, accomplished artist and the second wife of artist John Sloan.

For over fifty years, Helen Farr Sloan quietly created a remarkable profile as an American philanthropist. Following the 1951 death of her husband, John Sloan, one of the most famous American artists of the twentieth century, Helen organized the artist’s estate and turned it into an philanthropic instrument to serve local, regional, national, and international arts constituencies. She was particularly known for her support for women entering the fields of art history and museum studies.

Farr was born in New York City. She was the daughter of Dr. Charles Farr, a New York surgeon, and Helen Woodhull Farr. She graduated high school from the prestigious Brearley School for Girls in 1929. Her parents wanted her to attend Bryn Mawr College, but she knew that her interests lay in the arts and a less structured future. She took anatomy classes at Cornell University Medical College and studied weaving, pottery, metalwork, wood carving and jewelry making at the Craft Students League. At sixteen, Helen Farr enrolled in the Art Students League of New York, where she met and studied with John Sloan (1871–1951), who became her lifelong friend and mentor. In the 1930s Helen spent several summers in New Mexico with the Sloans, where she was an active member of the Santa Fe art colony. She was married in 1937 for a brief time to Wyatt Davis, brother of the abstract artist Stuart Davis. In 1944, while Helen Farr was teaching art at the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York City, Sloan's first wife, Dolly, died; later that year, Helen's former teacher, forty years her senior, became her husband.