Eric Sloane (American, 1905-1985) oil on board 1984 landscape painting, titled "On the Rim". Signed lower left. Attribution and title on reverse. 

Frame: 25 1/2 x 32 in.

Sight: 19 1/2 x 25 1/2 in.

#5518 .

Eric Sloane (1905-1985) was born in New York City to a well-to-do family. Early on, he took up an interest in art, spending many hours with neighbor and noted font inventor, Frederic Goudy (Goudy Type). Some of Sloane's first clients included aviation pioneers flying out of Roosevelt Field, Long Island. Many of those flyers insisted he paint the identifying marking on their planes. In exchange for teaching him to paint, Wiley Post himself, taught the young Hinrichs to fly. After his first flight the young man fell in love with clouds and the sky, themes that would be central to his work for the rest of his life. Among his early clients was Amelia Earhardt, who bought his first cloud painting. Said to be the finest cloud painter of his generation, his largest cloud painting graces an entire wall of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Fascinated by weather, The Farmer's Almanac and the early American farmer's ability to interpret "weather signs", Sloane is credited with being the first television weatherman, having come up with the idea of having farmers from all over New England call in their weather observations to a Dumont, New York TV station where they could be broadcast to the regional audience. He penned several useful books on the subject.