Category Archives: Today’s Post

Eric Sloane and the Army Air Corps

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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.

Eric Sloane painting at his easel

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         Eric Sloane at work at his Carter Road studio in Warren, Connecticut.  You’ll see straight away that Sloane re-purposed ends of primed Masonite for his multiple palettes.  A quart of oil or latex “barn red” paint (not artist’s oil paint) is visible at bottom right.  Eric loved buying those from the hardware store.  His composition is about 65% complete.  Eric will work more on the sky to give it greater depth and atmosphere, as well as providing more detail to the land.  You can readily see that it will be a stunner when completed.

      Circling back that can of paint – it’s a cleaner/restorer’s nightmare.  I’ve been cleaning and restoring works by Eric Sloane for more than a decade and there is only two things that make me nervous – nicotine from cigarettes and latex paint in an oil painting.       Photos from Wil Mauch’s Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane.  

Eric Sloane and Walt Disney

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In 1965, Eric Sloane was approached by Walt Disney (or perhaps, more accurately, by representatives of the Disney Company) to see if the author/artist might sell the rights to Diary of an Early American Boy so that the studio could spin the story into a Disney movie.  Sloane must have asked – or the production company disclosed – how much they were willing to spend to secure the rights.  Sloane rejected that amount, stating that it was an “astonishingly paltry sum” (Eighty).  Eric Sloane responded to Walt Disney via a letter in a way he intended to be humorous:  “I am well aware of your frugality and I feel embarrassed at your offer.  I so admire your work, however, that I’d rather give you the script for nothing, but I am sure my wife (and my psychiatrist) would object to that…I might settle for two bucks” (Eighty).  A check for two dollars soon arrived from Walt Disney Productions, along with a seventeen-page contract.  Not to be outdone, Sloane promptly found an appropriate location to hand his now framed check:  over the toilet in his studio bathroom.  The framed check remains in the possession of the Eric Sloane Museum of Kent, Connecticut, hung in Eric’s (recreated) studio.

     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.

Eric Sloane : Map of Newark Airport

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For our flying enthusiast friends, a vintage map of Newark Airport by Eric Sloane. From the late 1930s to the late 1940s, Eric Sloane illustrated a number of different American airfields, airports, and seaplane bases in a comic style. Similar to the way F.W. Beers & Co. assured the 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

Eric Sloane and Hurricanes

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Here in north central Pennsylvania, we are lucky not to be experiencing many effects from hurricane (now tropical storm) Henri, aside from rain showers. Beginning in the Second World War, Eric Sloane became much more meteorologically minded, likely an outgrowth of his experiences flying with pilots in the 1930s. By 1941, Eric had written his first book, Clouds, Air and Wind. C. 1944-1945, Eric Sloane was commissioned to create a number of weather models as a memorial to Lt. Joseph Willetts, who was killed while flying for the U.S. Navy (see previous posts for more information). By 1951, these models were ultimately installed in The Hayden Planetarium (part of the Museum of Natural History, New York). Here is a photograph of Eric’s model of a “tropical cyclone”, or hurricane: