Eric Sloane

Eric Sloane (born Everard Jean Hinrichs) (27 February 1905 – 5 March 1985) was an American landscape painter and author of illustrated works of cultural history and folklore. He is considered a member of the Hudson River School of painting.

Early life

Eric Sloane was born in New York City. As a child, he was a neighbor of noted sign painter and type designer Frederick W. Goudy. Sloane studied art and lettering with Goudy. While he attended the Art Students League of New York City, he changed his name because George Luks and John French Sloan suggested that young students should paint under an assumed name so that early inferior works would not be attached to them. He took the name Eric from the middle letters of America and Sloane from his mentor's name.

Career

In the summer of 1925, Sloane ran away from home, working his way across the country as a sign painter, creating advertisements for everything from Red Man Tobacco to Bull Durham. Unique hand calligraphy and lettering became a characteristic of his illustrated books.

Sloane eventually returned to New York and settled in Connecticut, where he began painting rustic landscapes in the tradition of the Hudson River School. In the 1950s, he began spending part of the year in Taos, New Mexico, where he painted western landscapes and particularly luminous depictions of the desert sky. In his career as a painter, he produced over 15,000 works. His fascination with the sky and weather led to commissions to paint works for the U.S. Air Force and the production of a number of illustrated works on meteorology and weather forecasting. Sloane is even credited with creating the first televised weather reporting network, by arranging for local farmers to call in reports to a New England broadcasting station.

Sloane also had a great interest in New England folk culture, Colonial daily life, and Americana. He wrote and illustrated scores of Colonial era books on tools, architecture, farming techniques, folklore, and rural wisdom. Every book included detailed illustrations, hand lettered titles, and his characteristic folksy wit and observations. He developed an impressive collection of historic tools which became the nucleus of the collection in the Sloane-Stanley Tool Museum in Kent, Connecticut.

Sloane died in New York in 1985, while walking down the street to a luncheon held in his honor. This celebration marked the publication of his memoir . [ [http://www.ericsloane-awareness.com/bio.htm Eric Sloane Biography ] ]

Legacy

Sloane's best known books are "A Reverence for Wood", which examines the history and tools of woodworking, as well as the philosophy of the woodworker; "The Cracker Barrel", which is a compendium of folk wit and wisdom; and "", based on a diary he discovered at a local library book sale. His most famous painted work is probably the skyscape mural, "Earth Flight Environment", which is still on display in the Independence Avenue Lobby in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. [ [http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal108/ Independence Avenue Lobby/Rutan Voyager ] ]

Bibliography

*"" (1990)
*"American Barns and Covered Bridges"
*"American Yesterday"
*"A Museum of Early American Tools" (1979)
*"An Age of Barns" (1975)
*"American Museum of Natural History" (1976)
*"A Reverence for Wood" (1965)
*"Camouflage Simplified" (1942)
*"Clouds, Air and Wind" (1941)
*"" (1962)
*"" (1985)
*"" (1972)
*""
*""
*"Eric Sloan's Almanac and Weather Forecaster" (1955)
*"Eric Sloane's America" (1994)
*"Eric Sloan's Weather Book" (1952)
*"Folklore of American Weather" (1963)
*"" (1978)
*"" (1943)
*"I Remember America" (1971, 1975)
*"Legacy" (1979)
*"Look At the Sky and Tell the Weather" (2004)
*"Mr. Daniels and the Grange" (with Edward Anthony) (1968)
*"" (1982)
*"Our Vanishing Landscape" (1955)
*"" (1960)
*"Sketches of America Past" (1995)
*"Skies and the Artist"
*"Spirits of '76" (1973)
*"The Book of Storms" (1956)
*"The Cracker Barrel" (1979)
*"The Little Book of Bells"
*"The Little Red Schoolhouse"
*"The Second Barrel" (1969)
*"The Sound of the Bells" (1966)
*"How You Can Forecast the Weather (1957)
*"" (1983)
*"" (1991)
*"" (1982)
*"" (1984)
*"Eric Sloane's I Remember America calendar" (1977)
*""

References

External links

* [http://www.ericsloane-awareness.com/bio.htm/ excerpts from "Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane"]
* [http://www.ericsloane.com/ unofficial Eric Sloane web page]
* [http://www.chc.state.ct.us/sloanestanleymuseum.htm/ website of Sloane/Stanley tool museum]
* [http://www.cultureandtourism.org/cct/cwp/view.asp?a=2127&q=302262/ Sloane info at Sloane/Stanley museum]
* [http://http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/15/112659.php/ "The World of Eric Sloane" retrospective article]