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About William L. Stevens
The town of Rockport, Massachusetts, proudly refers to William Lester Stevens as their "first native son artist" (Cooley, 1965, p. 23). Indeed, Bill, as he was known, grew up as an artist with established painters at his elbow. Accounts portray him as a child prodigy: stories of his model village construction, family portraiture, and success at a local art contest point out this early talent. Stevens exemplified the spirit of American industriousness and ambition. He earned money with odd jobs that ranged from shoveling snow to helping out in the family floral shop. Veteran artist Parker S. Perkins (1862-1942) was his first instructor; before long, William won a scholarship to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1909). His teachers were Philip Leslie Hale, Frank W. Benson, and Edmund Tarbell. While a student there, he contributed to a weekly newspaper and worked as an antique salesman.
Owing to his rapid development as an artist, already before the first world war, Stevens produced numerous accomplished landscapes and marines; he would win an impressive number of awards and prizes. Stevens would become a member of various artists’ organizations: the Boston Art Club, the Guild of Boston Artists, the North Shore Arts Association, and the Rockport Art Association, where he was a founding member. In 1911, he made his debut at the Art Institute of Chicago and in the following year he began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Although his family moved to Maine, the artist continued painting in Rockport and built a studio out of salvaged lumber (Cooley, 1965, p. 23). Stevens served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War I; after the Armistice, Stevens was discharged overseas, which enabled him to paint in Europe. He observed the popularity of impressionism, which had not yet been eclipsed by more avant-garde movements. A new era was beginning — only a few of the old-timers were still alive and painting, including Claude Monet. Renoir only had a year to live, and Mary Cassatt was almost blind. Guillaume Apollinaire would die in November 1918. Back in America, Morton Schamberg was constructing Dadaist sculpture but impressionism was flourishing, especially in places like Rockport, where Childe Hassam spent the summer of 1919.
Aldro T. Hibbard first came to Rockport that year. Cooley (1968, p. 70) described how he encountered Stevens, his former classmate, as an eager newcomer. When Hibbard asked if Rockport needed another ballplayer, Stevens replied, "We sure do, and maybe we can use another artist, too." After continued success in various local and national exhibitions, Stevens married a student named Angelina, who would become a competent portrait artist. He edited a local Review, managed by his brother Charles. Stevens reached artistic maturity at an early age. He was a plein-air painter in the purest definition. During the winter, he used a studio-sled, recalling Monet’s floating studio, and all year round, Stevens produced works of a rugged, and at times nostalgic American character. He did not follow the French impressionist technique in a rigid manner. He would avoid monotony by varying the focal center of his compositions. Yet once Stevens found a suitable manner, he held onto that successful formula. Typically American, Stevens would use light to reveal surface texture and to define objects rather than to obliterate form in the French manner. Through careful observation, he exploited the usual effects of natural texture with an energetic juxtaposition of *broken color. The later works are especially broadly handled although representational in approach, quite typical of late American impressionism. There is a degree of modernist abstraction in the way Stevens treated patterns of snow and bodies of water. Stevens tackled realist themes such as The Forge, 1923 (Rockport Art Association), which shows workers inside a warehouse. He spent some time on Monhegan Island, whose rugged coastline suited his temperament.
The Boston Art Club honored Stevens with a one-man show in October of 1933. A year later, he was elected a full academician at the NAD. As a muralist, Stevens painted two panels for the Dedham, Massachusetts Post Office in 1936 and three years later he finished Preparing Rockport Granite for Shipment in the Rockport Post Office (Park and Markowitz, 1984, pp. 213-214). During World War II, the Stevenses moved to Cricket Hill near Conway, Massachusetts but he never lost his love for Rockport. Davies (2001, p. 97) reproduces Rockport Mural, an impressive, ten-foot-wide wall painting finished in 1958 (Rockport National Bank), a loving testimony to the painter’s spiritual home. The great Rockport Realist died a week from his eighty-first birthday. |
Paintings by William L. Stevens
| Cape Ann-Spring Thaw |
| Oil on canvas: 24 x 29 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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| The Waterfall |
| oil on canvas: 30 x 36 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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