“Gloucester Harbor” by William Lester Stevens

Oil on cancas, Sight 25" x 30", Framed 33" x 38"
Signed lower right W. Lester Stevens, c. 1950
William Lester Stevens (1888-1969)
From 1943-1945 W. Lester Stevens went to the Vermont and New Hampshire woods to live in a log cabin during the winter months to paint snowscapes and loggers doing their daily tasks. By this time, he had become a full National Academician (1943), had painted horse with his mentor Edmund C. Tarbell in New Hampshire and was an exemplary painter of figures and the American landscape. He also depicted dramatic well-handled paintings of the North Shore in MA.
W. Lester Stevens was a landscape painter and teacher from the Boston school of painting. He was born in Rockport, MA in 1888 and he died in Greenfield, MA in 1969. He studied with Parker S. Perkins in Rockport; Edmund C. Tarbell and Frank W. Benson at Boston's Museum School; and in Europe after World War I.
The artist was a National Academician (NA) and a member of the American Watercolor Society (AWCS); 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. He lived in Rockport until 1934 and then moved to Conway.
Stevens painted thick impastoed post-impressionistic canvases 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