Eric Sloane, N.A., American (1905-1985)

"I hope I might be quoted someday as having said: 'The only value of age is that it gave time for someone to have done something worthwhile'. Eric Sloane, The Second Barrel

Artist's Biographical Information

Information from Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane

Born Everard Jean Hinrichs on February 27, 1905, Eric Sloane spent the majority of his youth in New York City (until 1919) and Long Island, New York. His father, George Hinrichs, Sr., grew prosperous as a meat and dairy products distributor in the city. Eric’s younger sister Dorothy described Eric as mischievous and often careless with possessions, but in the end always lovable and eager to please. An early interest in art was sparked by neighbors Herman Roundtree and Fred Goudy. Roundtree’s illustrations for magazines like Field & Stream made Eric dream of becoming a nature artist and Goudy’s printing and typesetting made Eric consider becoming a printer.

As Eric grew into adolescence, he dabbled in commercial art by designing and selling signs and print advertising for local businesses. He enrolled in the Art Students League of New York City for Saturday classes. Although no formal record exists of his attendance, Eric did state on a subsequent application to the New York School of Fine and Applied Art that he studied art through the Art Students League for two months. It was during his tenure at the Art Students League that Eric was party to a conversation between John Sloan and George Luks in which the two teachers were discussing the merits of working under an assumed name. Sloan and Luks agreed that it would be better for a young artist to assume a name, then once he perfected his technique and talents revert to his given name, eliminating his association with earlier (and therefore inferior) works. Impressionable young Everard J. Hinrichs decided to borrow his teacher’s last name and add an “e” to the end so as not to claim a familial relationship. He did not assume his new moniker immediately and spent years actually using both names-Eric Sloane to new friends and acquaintances and Everard Hinrichs to family members and on legal documents. He later stated that he chose “Eric” because the name formed the middle portion of the word “America”, but his choice likely had more to do with escaping the anti-German sentiment of the day by corrupting the name “Everard”.

Eric’s fragile world began to crumble in November of 1922 when his mother, largely the most stable influence in the Hinrichs household, died from complications related to a long illness. Eric stayed in the Long Island home until the summer of 1925, but it is easy to believe that the home was less than peaceful. A number of events an older Eric Sloane would attribute significance to flashed by in rapid succession. The first was his enrollment in The New York School of Fine and Applied Art on January 22, 1923. He was officially enrolled for a semester, though he was often absent and seldom turned in any work. He ran away to Ohio and Pennsylvania during the summer of 1923 (In later years Eric wrote and spoke of running away from home to Taos, New Mexico and used the years 1923 and 1925 interchangeably as the year he made his journey westward), returning to enroll in the fall semester at The New York School of Fine and Applied Art. He officially left the school on May 24, 1924, receiving no letter grades as a result of his absences. In September of 1924, Eric enrolled in Yale University’s School of Art, yet he barely managed to complete the academic year.

By the summer of 1925, Eric had made up his mind to leave home for good. He packed what amounted to a combination easel and sleeping bag, stole the family’s model T Ford and headed west. His experiences during his travels made an indelible impression on his mind, creating a visual palette he would return to repeatedly throughout his career. He made it as far west as Taos, New Mexico, where he rented a room from Russian painter Leon Gaspard. It was in Taos that Eric fell in love with the sky and a new medium with which to try to depict the brilliant colors of the southwestern sky - oil paints.

Eric returned to Long Island with his first wife Fredginia LeRouge in the summer of 1927. The reason for his return is not clear, though it is known that his father was quite ill at the time. In fact, Eric and his new wife accompanied the elder Hinrichs to various spas in the Midwest in an attempt to help him recover his health. When his father died on July 3, 1929, Eric was once again took to the road. Although he inherited the Long Island home and a considerable amount of money, creditors were able to secure most every dollar. Penniless, Eric returned to Taos.

From 1929 until 1933, Eric worked in Taos, supplementing his meager income as a tour guide with proceeds from the sale of sketches and drawings rendered in colored chalk and pencils. As he developed artistically, Eric theorized that a return to New York City might launch his artistic career. When he did return, he found work through a friend at the Coney Island Amusement Park, painting murals and designing the visual components of rides and amusements. He also found work at the Half Moon Hotel, which had the distinction of being the hotel nearest to Roosevelt Field. Since pilots and mechanics frequented the Half Moon’s restaurant and lounge, Eric started painting aviation-related murals on the restaurant walls. Soon, pilots who admired the young artist’s works invited him to the airfield, eventually hiring Eric to paint fuselage art and aircraft registration lettering. Not satisfied with just lettering aircraft, Eric began painting them. He often sold them to the pilots who flew the airplanes depicted in the work. Sometimes, Eric would exchange his art for rides. Once Eric was in the clouds, his world changed. He began to paint larger and more detailed paintings of aircraft and clouds. The airplanes got smaller as the clouds grew larger. He reached a point where he was painting large “cloudscapes” devoid of any aircraft at all, to which a friend asked, “Who is going to buy a painting of just clouds?” Undaunted, Eric hung it for sale at the Roosevelt Field Inn for what he termed an “exorbitant amount”. Aviatrix Amelia Earhart purchased the painting.

By 1940, Eric gained a reputation as a skilled painter of the sky. He was asked to draw several illustrations for two flying-related books, Your Wings by Assen Jordanoff and Earnest Vetter’s Let’s Fly: An ABC of Flying. His engaging style of illustration prompted the Devin-Adair Company to contract him to write and illustrate his first book, Clouds, Air and Wind (1941). The success of the book prompted the Army Air Corps to higher Eric to write and illustrate several publications.

During the Second World War, Sloane took a brief hiatus from writing after an acquaintance’s son was killed in a weather-related aviation accident. The accident prompted Sloane to begin researching flying and weather. He began by constructing several working models of weather phenomenon, models that became permanent exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History of New York. A deepening interest in weather caused Eric to enroll in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s meteorology program, but he left that program after becoming discouraged with the amount of mathematics needed to study meteorology. One of his professors half-jokingly suggested that Eric was looking for “romance” in the weather and would not find it at M.I.T.-he was far better off searching for and reading the almanacs and weather diaries of the early American farmer. It was a suggestion that would prove to be most pivotal in the artist’s life and career, the suggestion that lead to a lifetime of research, writing and painting, culminating in Eric Sloane’s philosophy of awareness.

As he read page after page of early diaries and almanacs, he became completely immersed in the mood and lore of early America. He gained an appreciation and respect for the early American way of life. He found the early American to be peculiarly aware: aware of the sky, nature, weather and of life itself. Eric Sloane spent the next forty years writing and illustrating dozens of books and creating thousands of paintings, all dedicated to the exploration and communication of the awareness and spirit of the early American way of life.

Eric’s research interests and collection of early American tools was a catalyst for the creation of the Sloane-Stanley Museum of Kent, Connecticut. The museum opened on May 28, 1969 and was enlarged and expanded in 1986. In his later years, Eric Sloane divided his time between Taos, New Mexico and Cornwall, Connecticut. He died on the streets of New York City on March 6, 1985 on the way to a luncheon engagement with his fifth wife Mimi, one week after his eightieth birthday and two days after the opening of his Hammer Gallery exhibit entitled “Eighty”.

Images, from top: Eric Sloane c. 1925. Courtesy of the Sloane-Stanley Museum; Eric Sloane, painter of cloudscapes, c. 1948. Courtesy of Dorothy Hinrichs; Diving Sikorskis gouache, pencil and chalk (16" x13"). Private collection; P-47 Thunderbolt, pastel on paper (19" x 16"). Courtesy of Green River Gallery; Eric Sloane in early January of 1969, four months prior to the opening of the Sloane-Stanley Museum. Courtesy of Dorothy Hinrichs. All images under copyright restrictions and used by permission. Duplication or copying of images in any form is prohibited. Images appear in Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane.