Eric Sloane (American, 1905 to 1985)
Born in New York City as Everard Jean Hinrichs, Sloane ran away from home at the age of fourteen and worked his way across the country by painting signs. Along the way he became avidly interested in the American farmer and architectural icons of the American Colonial era such as covered bridges, barns and homes. He settled in Taos, New Mexico in 1926 and worked in an artist colony with the Taos Society of Artists. Upon returning to the East he studied under John Sloan at the Art Students League in New York. Adopting the pseudonym Sloane (for his mentor) he changed his first name to Eric (using four letters of the word American) and thus an inspired sign painter became a foremost American artist and author.
After learning to fly he began to paint clouds and sky themes, which remained central to his work for the rest of his career. Some of Sloane’s first clients included aviation pioneers, most notably Amelia Earhart who purchased his first cloud painting. His most famous cloud painting, which he painted at the age of 71, graces an entire six story wall at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. It took less than two months to paint. Also due to his fascination with clouds and the farmer’s ability to interpret weather, Sloane is credited with being America’s first television weatherman. It was his idea that New England farmers call their weather observations into a New York City TV station.
Over his lifetime Sloan wrote thirty-eight books and painted approximately 15,000 paintings, mostly oil on masonite. He painted one almost every day striving to be better than the day before. He bought back or traded for some of his earlier works and then destroyed them by fire, claiming them to be inferior. Eric died of a heart attack in New York City in 1985 shortly before the release of his last book, titled Eighty. He is buried in Kent, Connecticut at the Sloan Stanley Museum.