Aiden Lassell Ripley (American, 1896-1969)
Born in Wakefield, Massachusetts, the son of a musician with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ripley was an accomplished musician, however, he chose to establish his career in art. After serving in the Army during World War I, he attended the Boston Museum School where he studied with artists such as Philip Hale and Frank W. Benson. While there, he was awarded a Paige Traveling Fellowship to study in Europe and Africa. Upon his return to America, he focused his work on the New England countryside, as well as scenes of city life and the railroad. Ripley himself was a committed outdoorsman, hunter, and active conservationist. He also worked as a portraitist and muralist and, in 1939, completed a mural for the Lexington Post Office.
Information courtesy of Skinner Inc., November 2008.
Aiden Ripley was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts to A Boston Symphony musician. Even though he excelled with musical instruments, painting was his true passion. He studied at the Fenway School and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School under Tarbell and Benson. After serving in World War I he went back to the Museum School where he won the Paige Travelling Fellowship. This fellowship enabled him to study abroad from 1923 to 1925 in Africa, France and Holland. While in Europe he produced a large number of watercolors and a smaller number of oil paintings of the landscapes around him. Upon his return to Boston, he exhibited these landscapes as well as landscapes of New England at his first one-man show at the Guild of Boston Artists in 1926.
Due to the rave review from this exhibition Ripley continued to find an eager audience for his work, but from this point on almost all his entire body of work concerned hunting, fishing, and outdoor scenes as subjects. Ripley was also active in the field of wildlife preservation and represented various sportsman-related groups in this capacity. As his success became greater and greater a larger number of galleries represented him including The Sporting Gallery and, then, Kennedy Gallery in New York. He won recognition and prizes for his work including: Logan Purchase prize and medal, Art Institute of Chicago, IL, 1928; co-winner, first Dacre Bush prize, Boston Watercolor Society, 1929. Ripley was elected into the National Academy of Design and served as president of the Boston Artists Guild for ten years preceding his death. He produced several commissions for corporations, Field and Stream, and individuals. His mural, Paul Revere’s Ride decorates the wall of the Lexington, Massachusetts post office, and one of his wildlife etchings was made into a U.S. postal stamp in 1942. Aiden Lassall Ripley died in 1969 in his home state of Massachusetts.