Born in St. Paul, MN, Frank Van Sloun was a painter in the social realism school of art, also known as the Ashcan School. He studied with Robert Henri at the Art Students League in New York where he worked with Edward Hopper. Winning a medal at the Panama Pacific Internation Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Van Sloun became an instructor at the California Institute of Fine Arts in 1917 and established the Van Sloun School of Art and Illustration in San Francisco from 1917-1919. In 1926, Van Sloun joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. He died in San Francisco, CA in 1938.
Some of his art works can be found in the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA), Hearst Art Gallery (St. Mary’s College at Moraga, CA), Mills College (Oakland, CA), Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena, CA), Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, CA) and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO). The Mark Hopkins’ The Room of the Dons contains nine panels painted by Frank Van Sloun and Maynard Dixon. The Bohemian Club also has murals painted by Van Sloun. The California State Library in Sacramento, CA contains a series of twelve mural panels illustrating the history of warfare from neolithic times to World War I completed by Van Sloun in April 1929.