Eric Sloane

Eric Sloane was born, Everard Jean Hinrichs, on February 27, 1905 in New York City to a well-to-do family. Early on, he took up an interest in art, spending many boyhood hours with neighbor and noted font inventor, Frederic Goudy (Goudy Type). From Goudy, at an early age, he learned to hand paint letters and signs.

A prolific member of the Hudson River School tradition of painting, Sloane is generally accepted as an artistic genius. Over his lifetime, it is estimated that he created nearly 15,000 paintings, mostly oil on masonite. He painted one almost every day, often before lunch, striving to do better than the day before. Later in his life, he bought back or traded for some of his earlier work, which he destroyed by fire, contending it was inferior.