The New England Watercolor Society, originally named the Boston Watercolor Society, is an artist-run organization formed to promote and exhibit work by watercolor painters. It was also at one time known as the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters. It is headquartered in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Founded as the Boston Watercolor Society, the group held its first exhibition in 1885, showing works by Childe Hassam, George Randolph Barse, and other artists. In 1892, the group's name was changed to the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters, and in 1966 it was changed back to the Boston Watercolor Society. In 1980, with a growing membership and expanding locales for exhibits, the name was changed to the New England Watercolor Society (NEWS). Andrew Wyeth was made an honorary member a few years before his death in 2009. [1]
The annual exhibition for signature members has been held at various venues, including the Boston Art Club, the Vose Galleries, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [1] In recent years it has been held, together with painting demonstrations and gallery talks, at the Guild of Boston Artists gallery on Boston's Newbury Street.
The society did not admit women in its early years, so local women artists formed a counter-organization, the Boston Watercolor Club. [1] The NEWS policy was changed in 1925 (five years after women received the right to vote in the United States) to include women as full members. Susan Bradley, Sarah Choate Sears, and Nellie Littlehale Murphy were among the first female members.
In 1988 NEWS began hosting a national biennial juried competition, which was held at the Federal Reserve Gallery through 2000 when the gallery closed. Since then it has been held at the Concord Art Association, the Bennington Center for the Arts, the North Shore Art Association, and the South Shore Art Center, among other venues. In alternate years NEWS hosts a New England regional juried competition. [2]
Signature members – those who have been juried into at least four open shows – currently number slightly fewer than 200.
Maurice Brazil Prendergast was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes. His delicate landscapes and scenes of modern life, characterized by mosaic-like color, are generally associated with Post-Impressionism. Prendergast, however, was also a member of The Eight, a group of early twentieth-century American artists who, aside from Prendergast, represented the Ashcan School.
Willard Leroy Metcalf was an American painter born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later attended Académie Julian, Paris. After early figure-painting and illustration, he became prominent as a landscape painter. He was one of the Ten American Painters who in 1897 seceded from the Society of American Artists. For some years he was an instructor in the Women's Art School, Cooper Union, New York, and in the Art Students League, New York. In 1893 he became a member of the American Watercolor Society, New York. Generally associated with American Impressionism, he is also remembered for his New England landscapes and involvement with the Old Lyme Art Colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut and his influential years at the Cornish Art Colony.
Frederick Childe Hassam was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums. He produced over 3,000 paintings, oils, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs over the course of his career, and was an influential American artist of the early 20th century.
The Ten American Painters was an artists' group formed in 1898 to exhibit their work as a unified group. John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and Childe Hassam were the driving forces behind the organization. Dissatisfied with the conservatism of the American art establishment, the three artists recruited seven others from Boston, New York City, and elsewhere on the East Coast, with the intention of creating an exhibition society that valued their view of originality, imagination, and exhibition quality. The Ten achieved popular and critical success, and lasted two decades before dissolving.
James Browning Wyeth is an American realist painter, son of Andrew Wyeth, and grandson of N.C. Wyeth. He was raised in Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania, and is artistic heir to the Brandywine School tradition — painters who worked in the rural Brandywine River area of Delaware and Pennsylvania, portraying its people, animals, and landscape.
Charles Herbert Woodbury, was an American marine painter.
Frank Weston Benson, frequently referred to as Frank W. Benson, was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolors and etchings. He began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the Library of Congress. Some of his best known paintings depict his daughters outdoors at Benson's summer home, Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, Maine. He also produced numerous oil, wash and watercolor paintings and etchings of wildfowl and landscapes.
Jane Peterson (1876–1965) was an American Impressionist and Expressionist painter. Her works use broad swaths of vibrant colors to combine an interest in light and in the depiction of spontaneous moments. She painted still lives, beach scenes along the Massachusetts coast, and scenes from her extensive travels. Her works are housed in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a fellow of the National Academy of Design and taught at the Art Students League from 1913–1919. During her lifetime, Peterson was featured in more than 80 one-woman exhibitions.
Rosina Ferrara (1861–1934) was an Italian artist's model from the island of Capri, who became the favorite muse of American expatriate artist John Singer Sargent. Captivated by her exotic beauty, a variety of 19th-century artists, including Charles Sprague Pearce, Frank Hyde, and George Randolph Barse, made works of art of her. Ferrara was featured in the 2003 art exhibit "Sargent's Women" at New York City's Adelson Galleries, as well as in the book Sargent's Women published that year.
The Florence Griswold Museum is an Art Museum at 96 Lyme Street in Old Lyme, Connecticut centered on the home of Florence Griswold (1850–1937), which was the center of the Old Lyme Art Colony, a main nexus of American Impressionism. The Museum is noted for its collection of American Impressionist paintings. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The site encompasses 12-acres of historic buildings, grounds, gardens, and walking trails.
Edmund Henry Garrett (1853–1929) was an American illustrator, bookplate-maker, and author—as well as a highly respected painter—renowned for his illustrations of the legends of King Arthur.
The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States.
Alan Shuptrine is a painter known for his Southern and Appalachian Mountains genre. He is a frame-maker, water gilder, and watercolorist. He is the son of painter Hubert Shuptrine (1936-2006).
Cliff Rock - Appledore is an oil painting by American artist Childe Hassam, painted in 1903. It is part of the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Warren Adelson is an American art dealer, art historian, and author specializing in 19th and 20th-century American Painting as well as contemporary art.
Sears Gallagher was an American artist proficient in drawing, etching, watercolor and oil painting. His work consisted largely of landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes depicting his native Boston and northern New England, especially Monhegan Island, Maine. Illustrating magazines and books provided steady work and income, and his etchings and prints attracted popular demand. Gallagher took his art seriously, adapted new techniques, and was open to the influence of European Impressionism. During the height of his career his watercolors were favorably compared to those of Winslow Homer and F. W. Benson, and his etchings and drypoints to those of James McNeill Whistler.
Ellen Robbins was a 19th-century American botanical illustrator known for paintings of wildflowers and autumn leaves. She was one of the contributors to the first annual exhibition of the American Watercolor Society in 1867/1868.
Laura Coombs Hills (1859–1952) was an American artist and illustrator who specialized in watercolor and pastel still life paintings, especially of flowers, and miniature portrait paintings on ivory. She became the first miniature painter elected to the Society of American Artists, and she was a founder of the American Society of Miniature Painters. She also worked as a designer and illustrated children's books for authors such as Kate Douglas Wiggin and Anna M. Pratt.
Bernard Springsteel is an American artist and sculptor.
Mary Lewis Taylor Bryan was an American artist, known for her watercolor paintings. She was a prolific artist in watercolor and several other media and divided her time between Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Jeffersonville, Vermont.