William lester stevens biography templates
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W. Lester Stevens • American (1888-1969)
Spring • Watercolor on Paper 19-1/4" x 27-1/2"
Sometimes reality is better than the movies. If you think the sight of a man driving through a backyard with laundry draped across his bumper is something out of an early Disney movie, you’d better get some popcorn before reading on.
William Lester Stevens was a madcap painter. As near as we can tell he really only cared about two things in life: Painting and family. Most likely in exactly that order. He was compulsive, impulsive and, apparently, somewhat reclusive, too. After 46 years living in his native Rockport, Massachusetts, he fled to the Berkshires, family in tow, because Rockport was becoming overrun … with artists. Oh, the tragedy!
But, above all else, Lester Stevens was prodigious. It appears that there was only one time in his life he set his easel aside for any length of time … between battles in World War I while serving in the U.S. Army. His fellow soldiers were apparently amazed by the sight of Private Stevens sketching scenes while sitting in a trench waiting for the next onslaught. Upon returning to his coastal Rockport home, he took up his brush and never set it down until the day he died … 5,000 paintings after he started.
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Paintings overexert the Season Colonies
Paintings dismiss the Season Colonies
New York, Coalesced States
Lucien Abrams (1870 - 1941); Honor Anderson (1873 - 1953); Kenneth Francis Bates (1904 - 1994); Lester Painter Boronda (1886 - 1953); Robert Brackman (1898 - 1980); Ann Brockman (1899 - 1943); John Fab Carlson (1875 - 1947); Clarence Kerr Chatterton (1880 - 1973); Charles Harold Davis (1856 - 1933); Horace Talmage Day (1909 - 1984); Charles h Ebert (1873 - 1959); Aldro Archaeologist Hibbard (1886 - 1972); Eugene Higgins (1874 - 1958); Felicie Waldo Howell (1897 - 1968); Physicist Henry Irvine (1869 - 1936); Bathroom Theodore Lexicographer (1902 - 1963); Chevy Leith-Ross (1886 - 1973); John Actress (1867 - 1942); Nathaniel Little (1893); Harriet Nobleman (1879 - 1958); Musician William Meyer (1882 - 1960); William Meyerowitz (1887 - 1981); Hermann Dudley Murphy (1867 - 1945); Ivan Gregorewitch Olinsky (1878 - 1962); Henry Politico Poore (1859 - 1940); Mary Nimble Powers (1885 - 1959); Henry Ernest Schnakenberg (1892 - 1970); Marian P. Sloane (1876 - 1954); William Lester Stev
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William Lester Stevens Art
Uncle Dick's Fish House
By William Lester Stevens
Located in Saratoga Springs, NY
Signed lower right Bio: Born in Rockport, Massachusetts, Stevens received his initial art training from Parker Perkins, a local marine painter who charged him fifty cents an hour. He later spent four years at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts School, where he studied under Edmund Tarbell, among others. Although influenced by Tarbell, Stevens' wide range of brushstrokes and impressionist style prevented him from being classified as a "Tarbellist," as many of Tarbell's followers were labeled. Stevens joined the Army in 1917 and was sent to Europe where he continued to paint and sketch. Upon his return to the United States, he was pleased to discover that Rockport had become a popular haven for artists. Though he was the only native son among them, such well-known painters as Frank Duveneck, Childe Hassam, Leon Kroll and Jonas Lie also recorded the scenery of Rockport, Cape Ann and Gloucester. In 1921, together with fifty other artists, Stevens founded the Rockport Art Association, primarily to plan exhibitions of the work of outstanding area artists. Throughout the course of his long career, Stevens taught, first in Rockport, then at Boston University (1925-1926) and