William Lester Stevens Sold at Auction Prices

Landscape painter, b. 1888 - d. 1969

(b Rockport, MA, 1888; d Greenfield, MA, 1969) American Painter. William Lester Stevens began his art education taking lessons from Parker Perkins, a marine painter in his hometown of Rockport. He went on to spend four years at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston under the tutelage of Edmund Tarbell, Frank Benson, Philip Hale and William Paxton. After some time in the army and further art education in Europe, Stevens began teaching; first in Rockport then at Boston University and Princeton. Later he would take groups of students all over the country. His work was particularly well received in the South. Stevens spent some time in North Carolina teaching and exhibiting his work though he continued to call Massachusetts home. Stevens was fanatically devoted to his work and as such was extremely prolific. His early works are characterized by thick, impasto oil paint, but later in his career he tended more towards translucent washes of acrylic or watercolor.