December Morning
by Eric Sloane (1905–1985)19⅞ x 23⅞ inches
Signed lower right: –SLOANE; inscribed lower left: DECEMBER MORNING
Provenance
Private collection
Sale, Hindman, Chicago, Illinois, May 10, 2022, lot 107, from above
Note: December Morning highlights Eric Sloane’s appreciation for the American outdoors. Sloane created numerous images of marshlands with tall reeds emerging from the water and billowing cloudscapes overhead. In his writing, Sloane described the marsh as “the richest and most valuable land in the American nation,” continuing, “The water is pure and sweet, tinged to a faint wine hue by the juniper, a potent medicinal drink.”[1]
[1] Eric Sloane, I Remember America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1971), n.p.
Artist Biography
By Nina Sangimino
I think in some ways I’m a failure because people think I’m a painter of barns and a writer of nostalgia… It’s not what I’ve been trying to do. I hate nostalgia. It’s a dreaded disease. [1]
—Eric Sloane
To view a painting by Eric Sloane of a quintessential New England covered bridge, with its weathered clapboard siding, worn dirt road, and Huck Finn–inspired children fishing in the brook below, one is touched by the familiarity of the scene. But what seems at first glance to be a simple version of Yankee Americana reveals deeper meaning when understood in the
