Above the Weather, Fortresses at 15000’, 1945

Provenance

Private collection, Northampton, Massachusetts

Private collection, ca. 1970, acquired from above

Private collection, New York, New York, by descent from above

Sale, Shannon’s, Milford, Connecticut, October 27, 2022, lot 7, from above

Related Work (see following pages)

Night Sky, oil on board; National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Note: The sky became an instrumental motif in Eric Sloane’s career. He depicted various weather conditions in the sky, often including an airplane gliding across the composition. The artist sought to understand the science of weather, enrolling in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later, briefly taking a position as broadcast weatherman for the Dumont television station in New York City. In his 1985 book, Sloane emphasized the importance of the sky, writing, “I still believe the panorama of weather offers a beauty that most people look at but do not really see, and that the sky, instead of being mere back-drop to the daily scene, can be a major symphony in itself, a much overlooked subject.”_[1]

_[1] Eric Sloane, Eighty: An American Souvenir (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1985), n.p.