Stephen B. O’Brien Jr Fine Arts, LLC is planning to publish the most comprehensive book to date on sporting artist Aiden Lassell Ripley (American, 1896–1969) and is seeking submissions. The book, which will be released in conjunction with the Aiden Lassell Ripley exhibition scheduled at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Mass., in August 2008, will showcase the painter’s large body of work in a hardbound volume comprising more than 160 pages and with more than 125 color illustrations.
Ripley is perhaps best known for his skill at capturing outdoor sporting scenes. He spent much of his career traveling to plantations to paint commissioned shooting scenes. Vanderbilt, Mellon, Marshall Field and Carnegie are among the prestigious names of families who commissioned Ripley’s work.
In this new survey of Ripley’s oeuvre, the authors will include watercolors, oils, drawings, magazine covers, portraits, commissions and public murals. Subject matter will cover not just the sporting paintings, but the artist’s wide range of talents — from early impressionistic landscapes of Europe and New England to later realist works depicting the outdoor life in places from the Deep South to Cape Cod.
The publication will cast this important but often overlooked artist in a new light. Known today for his realist sporting scenes of the 1940s and 1950s, Ripley was a highly trained early Impressionist who followed the strictures of the Boston School. His looser works of the 1920s and 1930s are comparable to the work of the top-ranked Boston School Impressionist Frank W. Benson, with whom he studied.
The book will be the first major publication on Ripley since The Guild of Boston Artists put out Aiden Lassell Ripley: Paintings in 1972. Sporting art specialist Stephen O’Brien Jr and art historian Julie Carlson are co-authoring the work after years of primary research.
O’Brien is seeking quality submissions for inclusion in the book. These can be submitted for consideration to: bea@americansportingart.com or Stephen O’Brien Fine Arts, 268 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116.
Submissions should include all possible information about the works, including subject matter, medium, dimensions, signature and provenance.
For information, 617-536-0536.
