On 18 June 1968, Connecticut Governor John Dempsey announced that Eric Sloane would donate his early American tool collection to the state of Connecticut. True, Eric’s fascination with early American tools began c. 1952 after his purchase of an 18th century farmhouse in Brookfield, Connecticut. Yet it was Eric’s “placements” – consisting of early American hand tools and several early 19th century almanacs mounted to an antique barn board backing – where the artist synthesized his conception of tools as an art form. From Wil Mauch’s “Symbols of American Spirit: 50 Years of the Eric Sloane Museum”, used by permission.

To learn more about the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum and our mission to assist in the preservation and interpretation of the Eric Sloane Museum and its collection, please visit the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum homepage. While you’re there, please consider donating online to our new Hands-on! classroom project.

“It was Sloane’s friendship with Wiley Post that introduced him to a new area of artistic exploration…Sloane wrote of flying with Post one day when the aviator told him that ‘Someday an artist will come along and just paint clouds and sky’.
-From Aware: A Retrospective of the life and work of Eric Sloane by Wil Mauch. Used by permission.

“The Winnie Mae”
Oil on Masonite

To learn more about the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum and our mission to assist in the preservation and interpretation of the Eric Sloane Museum and its collection, see www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org. While you’re there, please consider making a donation online to our new hands-on classroom project.

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From @wilmauch: “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 by visiting us at www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org.

For our pilot friends – Eric Sloane’s “A Complete Map for Pilots Showing Long Island, New York, and All Nearby Pastures”, 1937. From Symbols of American Spirit: 50 Years of the Eric Sloane Museum by Wil Mauch:
“From the late 1930s to the late 1940s. Eric Sloane illustrated a number of different American airfields, airports, and seaplane basis in comic style. Similar to the way that F.W. Beers & Co. assured the commercial success of their Victorian-era maps and atlases, Eric was sure to include the names of prominent individuals, families, and businesses associated with a particular airfield.”
This is known amongst collectors as a “foil map”, as it was created using a paper backed foil, stamped, then inked. Relatively few of them survive.

Eric Sloane at left, his father (George Hinrichs, Sr.) at right. I always thought that, in this photo, Eric bears more than a passing resemblance to Matt Damon. Taken in 1928 at Hot Springs, Arkansas, George was recuperating from pneumonia at the time. Eric’s father would die less than a year later, on the porch of Cedarcrest, the Hinrichs family summer home on Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. Photo courtesy of Wil Mauch, from his 2001 “Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane”.
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.

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.

This video explores Eric Sloane’s childhood and adolescence, and considers some of the artist’s earliest life experiences as pivotal in explaining how Everard Jean Hinrichs (Eric Sloane’s given name) became Eric Sloane.

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