Do you know what a pit saw is (and does?)? If not, it might be time for you to visit the Eric Sloane Museum!

A big thank you to Scott Sheldon and John Pennings of the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum and museum head Andrew Rowandfor all their incredible work on theNoah Blake cabinyesterday! My special thanks to Andrew for going the extra mile in helping me to install the brand new hands-on simple machines exhibit in the cabin. Visitors young and old can now experiment with simple machines and understand fully how they can provide a mechanical advantage.

Eric Sloane painted this stunning mural for the President of Morton Salt in 1958. Rumor has it that, when the building was demolished, an undisclosed collector paid an equally undisclosed sum to have a team of “specialists” cut the mural intact from the wall. I’ve never been able to track the truth of the rumor down, nor am I aware of anyone who has seen the mural since this photo was taken.

Here is a fantastic postcard that features an illustration by Eric Sloane, N.A. sent to me by my good friend and fellow Sloane enthusiast Randy Castellini. You can see that the illustration mimics the type of illustrations that Eric was creating for air fields like Roosevelt Field and Newark Airport. The postmark on the verso of 1940 confirms what we have suspected is the era of these maps. Recall that it was at the Roosevelt Field Inn where Eric Sloane hung one of his first cloudscapes, to which a friend asked him, ‘Who is going to buy a large painting of just the clouds?’ – Sloane had the last laugh, as it was Amelia Earhart who purchased the painting.”
Learn more about how the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum supports and promotes the legacy of Eric Sloane through a robust partnership with the Eric Sloane Museum.

Just in to the gallery – this original pen and ink by Eric Sloane, N.A. A charming view of a flock of geese over a marshland. Over the course of his artistic career, Eric Sloane included ducks or geese in a wide variety of his works, probably a result of time spent on Long Island, N.Y. as a younger man. Approximately 12″ tall x 10″ wide. Signed Eric Sloane, N.A. at center right. On heavy artist board. Unframed as received in the gallery.

Eric Sloane at home, 1958, as part of a series of publicity photographs concerning the publication of his book Seasons of America Past.
Photo courtesy of Wil Mauch. Learn more about how the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum supports and promotes the legacy of Eric Sloane through a robust partnership with the Eric Sloane Museum by visiting us at www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org.

Just in to the gallery – this iconic, original pen and ink view of a Pennsylvania bank barn with a stone spring house in the foreground by Eric Sloane, N.A. Well-sized at approximately 12″ tall x 10″ wide.
Signed Eric Sloane, N.A. at center. On heavy artist board. Unframed as received in the gallery – we have decided to let the new owner make their own decisions regarding framing options. Please contact the gallery for pricing.

Spring has sprung at Weather Hill, but this new arrival at the gallery has us thinking of winter again! An early ski scene by Eric Sloane, N.A. with beautiful highlights of color in the sky. Oil on canvas board, great size at 19.5″ tall x 23.25″ wide, signed lower right.

Just in to the gallery – “Smoke Houses” by Eric Sloane, N.A.. This charmer is from Eric’s 1966 book “An Age of Barns”. The book was a first for Eric Sloane in many ways, but the two most significant were that it was his first “coffee table” sized book, and it was arguably his first real tour de force in large, fully rendered pen and ink illustration. As evident here, Eric could turn a seemingly mundane aspect of early American vernacular architecture (anything from outhouses to smoke houses!) into a fascinating, entertaining, educational, and charming drawing. Interestingly, Eric almost always created illustrations to size, meaning that he had a good idea of how much space on a page he would have on a finished, published book, and worked his drawings to that size. One of the aspects of illustrations I love from An Age of Barns is that they are all large, much larger than the finished space they occupy in the published book. Whether Eric was ensuring that the published drawings retained a higher level of detail – or if the original idea was to print An Ag of Barns in a larger size (or both) – his pen and ink illustrations created for the book are magnificent. Note also the incorporation of a lined and signed mat.

Here is the last of the four seasons depicted by Eric Sloane, N.A. in a series of pen and ink illustrations new to the gallery – Autumn. Those who know Eric’s works well will recognize this as a familiar scene for the artist in both illustrations and in oils. The old wheelbarrow parked under the apple tree, gathering the last of the apples the tree has to offer. Usually, as in this illustration, there are apples to be seen on the ground about the wheelbarrow, suggesting, perhaps, that the wheelbarrow was more or less parked under the tree to catch the last of the falling apples.