Aiden Lassell RipleyAmerican, 1896-1969 Excerpt from Animal and Sporting Artists in America by F. Turner Reuter, Jr. © 2008: Aiden Lassell Ripley was born in Wakefield, MA, on 31 December 1896. A childhood interest in music gave way to painting while he was in high school. He studied in Boston, MA, at the Fenway School of Illustration until the start of American involvement in the First World War, at which point he joined the army; he served both as an infantryman and in a military band. After his discharge in 1919 he studied with Frank Benson (qv) and Philip Hale at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He began his career as a landscape painter, traveling with his wife in France, the Netherlands, and North Africa on fellowship money from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1924. After his return to the United States Ripley traveled along the eastern coast and attempted to establish himself as a landscape painter. During the Depression landscapes and portraiture were not in great demand. An enthusiastic sportsman and avid gunner after ruffed grouse, he decided to paint compositions of the subjects he knew well, including upland game and waterfowl shooting and angling for game fish with the fly rod. He also continued to paint portraits on commission as well as some historical works, such as a set of fourteen paintings depicting the life of Paul Revere. He taught at the Harvard School of Architecture in Cambridge, MA, in 1929. He illustrated a number of books for the Derrydale Press (qv), Eugene V. Connett’s sporting imprint, in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In 1942 his American Widgeon, a drypoint of two ducks on the water and a third landing, was chosen for the Federal Duck Stamp for the 1942 - 1943 season. He is best known for his work in watercolor, although he also produced a number of oils. His studies were generally in pencil and many of his finished graphite drawings were reproduced as advertisements and illustrations in periodicals and catalogues. As well as paintings, he produced a number of etchings and drypoints of sporting subjects. He stopped making new etchings in 1956, but he continued selling prints from his old plates well into the 1960s. His work was also reproduced as lithographs; the Sporting Gallery and Bookshop in New York City published his watercolor Turkey Drive in that form in 1966. The actor Robert Montgomery commissioned works from him, showing Montgomery with gun and dogs in the field; one shows Montgomery and fellow actor James Cagney returning from a pheasant shoot. Aiden Lassell Ripley served as president of the Guild of Boston Artists, where he had begun exhibiting in 1930, for ten years, beginning in 1959. He was also a member of the National Academy of Design; the American Watercolor Society; the Audubon Artists, Inc.; and the American Artists’ Professional League, all in New York City. He received a medal at the Boston Tercentenary Exhibition in 1930. He also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia; the National Academy of Design, where he showed a few portraits and genre pictures in the 1940s; the Art Institute of Chicago (IL); the American Watercolor Society; the New York Watercolor Club; with Artists for Victory at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Boston Watercolor Society; the Boston Art Club; the Worcester (MA) Museum of Art; and other places. His Pheasants in the Cornfield is in the Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, NY. The Denver (CO) Art Museum has his Timber Wolves at Bay. The Pebble Hill Plantation Museum in Thomasville, GA has ten paintings by Ripley: eight of turkeys, one of grouse, and one of mallards. Other institutions holding his work include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Columbia (SC) Museum of Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; the Columbus (GA) Museum; the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA; the Albany (GA) Museum of Art; the Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA. Aiden Lassell Ripley died in Lincoln, MA, on 29 August 1969.