The Green Door, by Eric Sloane, N.A. Last one of these we have at Weather Hill. A scarce print struck in commemoration of the 1976 American Bicentennial, part of the I Remember America collection of paintings by the artist. This collection traveled to the former Soviet Union for exhibition. You can see that Eric was a master of interpreting light, color and shadow as they related to season and time. Not an easy thing to capture so convincingly as he does. As is often the case in paintings by the artist, there is a solidity and developed sense of security in the materials depicted and methods of construction. Eric saw continuity, solidity, a certain vernacular grace and artistry, and peace in much of his rural America. Here is Eric’s description of the piece, recorded in 1976:

“A door opening to outside summer is always a framed greeting. This door, a mate to the painting No. 1, was in the same stone barn and was built of horizontal and vertical slabs of virgin pine, ‘deadened’ together with hand-wrought nails.
‘Dutch doors’ were designed to keep out animals, but the effect of the top half being open and the bottom shut, transforms the door into a window. Like the barns they were attached to, they should be called German rather than Dutch; the man who made this barn and its door was named Ludwig Wiess; his initials and date he arrived from Germany – 1746 – were carved into the other side.”