In the late 1920s, just as the market for his city pictures was finally reaching a point at which he might have made a comfortable living, Sloan changed his technique and abandoned his characteristic urban subject matter in favor of nudes and portraits. This independence was entirely typical of him, to the dismay of his dealer, Charles Kraushaar. Rejecting as superficial the spontaneous painterly technique of Manet and Hals—and also of Robert Henri and George Luks—he turned instead to the underpainting and glazing method used by old masters such as Andrea Mantegna. It was an eccentric choice. The resulting paintings, which often made unconventional use of superimposed hatchings to define the forms, have never attained the popularity of his early Ashcan works.