Background
Farr was born in New York City. She was the daughter of Doctor Charles Farr, a New York surgeon, and Helen Woodhull Farr.
Farr was born in New York City. She was the daughter of Doctor Charles Farr, a New York surgeon, and Helen Woodhull Farr.
She graduated high school from the prestigious Brearley School for Girls in 1929. 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.
Foreign over fifty years, Helen Farr Sloan quietly created a remarkable profile as an American philanthropist. She was particularly known for her support for women entering the fields of art history and museum studies. Her parents wanted her to attend Bryn Mawr College, but she knew that her interests lay in the arts and a less structured future.
After Sloan’s death, she helped to organize his well-received posthumous retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art and returned to her teaching career and to painting.
The contents of his studio and his wide-ranging library became a treasure trove for philanthropic giving. The recipients of her largesse include the University of Delaware, Sewell C. Biggs Museum in Dover, Delaware, Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, Boston Film and Video Foundation, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Katonah Museum of Art in New York and the New-York Historical Society.
Helen Farr Sloan’s own paintings are held in private and public collections, including the Delaware Art Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, District of Columbia Beginning in 1961, and continuing throughout her life, Helen Farr Sloan nurtured a special relationship with the Delaware Art Museum. Because of Helen Farr Sloan’s gifts and scholarship, the Delaware Art Museum received more than 5,000 works including the preeminent collection of the work of John Sloan with virtually every aspect of his career represented.
This has made the Delaware Art Museum the leading repository for the study of John Sloan, who was noted for his realistic images of turn-of-the-century New York City.
In the early 1960s, she also taught art part-time at Regis High School in Manhattan. Helen Farr Sloan died at the age of 94 in Wilmington, Delaware.
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.