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.
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.
One of Eric Sloane’s illustrations for Your Body In Flight (T.O. # 00-25-13), prepared by the Aero Medical Laboratory of Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio), published by the Air Service Command, Patterson Field, Fairfield, Ohio for the United States Army Air Forces, July 20, 1943. Eric Sloane’s contribution to the training of pilots both informally just prior to the onset of WWII and formally as in this Army Air Forces manual, is often ignored. Eric Sloane contributed to two publications prior to the war that were used by civilian pilots as well as military recruits: Your Wings, by Assen Jordanoff (Funk and Wagnalls, May 1940) and Let’s Fly: An ABC of Flying by Earnest Vetter ( William Morrow and Company, 1940). Sloane also authored and illustrated his own Clouds, Air and Wind (The Devan-Adair Company, 1941). During the war, Eric Sloane wrote and illustrated Camouflage Simplified (The Devan-Adair Company, 1942), Gremlin Americanus, A Scrapbook Book Collection of Gremlins (B.F. Jay and Co., 1943). While the latter title was meant to be humorous, it was both quite an effective remainder of the dangers that faced pilots, as well as a probably much needed break from the military training manuals. During the war, Eric Sloane also contributed to Junior Aviation Science (by D.H. Grimm, Noble & Noble Publishers, 1942) and to at least one other publication for the Army Air Forces, Pilot’s Information File (1943, the Army Air Forces).
Photo from Wil Mauch’s Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane. Learn more about this most fascinating of American artists by visiting www.weatherhillfarm.com.
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.
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.
