Alden Lassell Ripley
Birth Date: 1896
Death Date: 1969
Artist Gallery
Aiden Lassell Ripley was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts, a rural town to the north west of Boston. His interest in painting and drawing dates from childhood, but his formal education began at the Fenway School of Illustration in 1914. Ripley joined the army in 1917 (WWI) and served for two years as a musician in General Purshing’s marching band. He returned to Boston after the Treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1919 and continued his education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston was the artistic focal point of the nation in the early years of the twentieth century. The city provided a rich artistic environment for art students and Ripley had access to the great painters of the time and also, to numerous examples of their work. He is one of the few painters in his generation who chose to stay within the traditions of his youth and training rather than turning to experimental forms such as abstract expressionism. The paintings from Ripley’s European sojourn in the early 20s show him to be a fine draftsman with a command of the techniques needed for his success with the watercolor medium. His watercolors done in Holland and Venice are composed directly in color without a pencil outline or from underneath. During WWII, Ripley curtailed his travelling and began to produce a large body of work based on the landscape around his home in Lexington, Massachusetts and Boston’s urban landscape. He was attracted by the interplay between the solidity of the buildings and the patterns of light and shadow they created, interspersed with people. He painted children sledding on the Common and people going about the daily chores in both urban and rural settings. Ripley’s training gave him the tools to work in a variety of mediums. He was an etcher, a watercolorist, an oil painter and muralist. He painted historical murals in public buildings in Lexington and Winchester, Massachusetts, as well as in domestic interiors where he used a sporting theme. Ripley loved the outdoors and enjoyed hunting and fishing.