CLOUDSCAPE
signed and inscribed ERIC SLOANE A.N.A. lower left
oil on board
59 x 120.5cm; 23 1/4 x 47 1/2in
83.5 x 145cm; 33 x 57in (framed)

Property from a London Collection

Baptised Everard Jean Hinrichs and raised in New York, as a boy Sloane studied type design and art with his neighbour the noted typographer Frederic Goudy, and thanks to the pioneering aviator Wiley Post experienced flying at a precociously young age, experiences which gave him a love of painting and a life-long fascination for the sky.

Sloane first worked in his 'teens as a commercial artist, sign painting and creating advertisements for the likes of tobacco companies Red Man and Bull Durham. Then he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York where he changed his name. Subsequently settling in Lichfield County, Connecticut, where he was inspired by the Hudson River School of artists, Sloane became fascinated by Americana and the American folk tradition. He wrote prolifically on every day life during the Colonial-era, from tools to architecture, farming techniques to folklore and became friends with the landscape painter Andrew Wyeth. In the 1950s he spent time in Taos New Mexico, attracted by the vast desert landscapes and the state's huge ecocative skies. One of his best known works is the skyscape mural, Earth Flight Environment, commissioned by the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum for its opening in 1976, which remains on display there in the Independence Avenue Lobby. Sloane has a museum dedicated to his life and work in Kent, Connecticut.