William Lester Stevens (American, 1888 to 1969)
William Lester Stevens was a landscape painter and teacher from the Boston school of painting. He was born in Rockport, Massachusetts in 1888 and he died in Greenfield, Massachusetts in 1969. He studied with Parker S. Perkins in Rockport, Tarbell and Benson at Boston’s Museum School, and in Europe after World War I.
He was a National Academician and a member of the American Watercolor Society; a founding member of the Rockport Art Association; Springfield, MA Art League; Guild of Boston Artists; Gallery on Moors; New Haven Paint and Clay Club, CT; Gloucester Society of Art; North Shore Art Association; Boston Watercolor Club and the New York Watercolor Club. He won art awards at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; American Watercolor Society; New Haven Paint and Clay Club; Springfield Art League; Salons of America; Washington Watercolor Club; North Shore AA; Rockport AA and more. He painted USPO murals in Dedham and Rockport, MA, the Boston City Hall, the Louisville, KY Art Museum and several schools in Boston.
Stevens lived in Rockport until 1934 and then moved to Conway. Stevens painted post-impressionistic canvas impastos early in his career, and at the end of his life, he used almost translucent thin washes of paint. He taught at Princeton University, Boston University, in his various studios, and at the Springfield Art Museum. During the Great Depression he taught painting at Grand Manan. A compulsive painter and known to be an “eccentric,” it is estimated he finished over 5,000 canvases.
Information courtesy of Charlton Hall Galleries, September 2006.