Aldro Hibbard

Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Aldro Hibbard was an Impressionist landscape painter much concerned with light and shadow.  He was one of the founders of the Rockport Art Colony, and the Rockport Art Association now occupies his former studio.  Hibbard grew up in Dorchester and Boston and spent much time in the summers in Boston and Cape Cod.  He showed early artistic talent, an interest he shared with a life-long love of baseball, which led to his becoming a professional baseball player.

For his art training, he graduated from the Massachusetts Normal School and studied at the Boston Museum School with Edmund Tarbell, Joseph DeCamp, and Frank Benson. In Boston from 1927 to 1929, he occupied Fenway Studios.

Hibbard won the Paige Traveling Scholarship to study abroad, though his travels were cut short by War Word I , and he returned to America in 1914.  In the early 1920s, he became a summer resident of Cape Ann and wintered in Jamaica, Vermont in the West River Valley.  There he painted many rural snowscenes including oxen pulling wagons, covered bridges, and sugar houses .  Much of his large body of work, concerned with light and shadow, depicts Vermont landscape, New England coastlines, and the Canadian Rockies. From 1915, he was also an instructor in the Art Department of Boston University.


Source:
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art

Aldro T. Hibbard was born August 25, 1886 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and died in Rockport, Massachusetts November 12, 1972.  He studied at the Massachusetts Normal Art School (1909), the Massachusetts College of Art; and at the Boston Museum School through 1913 with Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank W. Benson, Leslie P. Thompsen, Joseph R. DeCamp and Philip Hale at Boston's Museum School.  Because he showed such talent the Boston Museum faculty gave Hibbard a Paige Traveling Scholarship (1913-1915) to study abroad.

Despite the fact that Hibbard was a remarkably gifted baseball player and was asked to join pro teams, he gave up sports to become a professional painter and instructor.  In 1915, Hibbard was instructor of painting at Boston University.  He was a Founding Member and Director of the Rockport Art Association (MA) Summer School of Drawing and Painting (1921-1928), which later became The Hibbard School of Painting.

He is best known for his post-impressionistic winter landscapes of New England. He was married to Winifred D. Jackman (5/31/25), and the couple had wo children, Malcolm and Elaine.


Memberships include: Guild of Boston Artists; National Academy of Design (ANA; NA 1933); Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts; Rockport AA; New Haven Paint & Clay Club; North Shore AA (MA); Salmagundi Club (NY); Gloucester AA (MA, board of managers); Copley Society; Audubon Artists; Allied American Artists; American Artists Prof. League; Academy of American Artists, Springfield, MA and more.

Solo exhibitions include: Buffalo Fine Art Academy (1914) Guild of Boston Artists (1919, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1928, 1953, 1965); Brockton Public Library (1917); Macbeth Gallery (NY 1930); Boston Art Club (1916); Legendsea Studios (Hibbard's gallery); Roger Curtis Gallery, Gloucester, MA (1971-1977); Vose Galleries of Boston (1979); Doll & Richards (Boston) and more.

Awards include: 1st prize, Duxury, MA (1920); hon. ment., CAI (1921); Hallgarten Prize, NAD (1921); gold medal PAFA (1922; 1927; 1931); Rockport AA (1942, 1948, 1954, 1957, 160, 1964, 1966); North Shore AA (1956, 1960, 1963, 1964); Ogunquit Art Club (1960); Ameri. APL (1966) and many more.

Source: John L. Cooley, Artist in Two Worlds (1968); "Striking Pictures Shown By Hibbard," Boston Globe (5/8/24).


Written by Patricia Jobe Pierce, historian of the Boston School of Painting

Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Aldro Thompson Hibbard received his early art training at the Boston Museum School where he studied with Edmund Tarbell, Frank W. Benson and Joseph DeCamp.  Due to his exceptional talents, Hibbard received a Paige Traveling Scholarship (1913-15) to study abroad.  He was also proficient in the sport of baseball and was invited to play professionally, but,in 1915, decided to pursue a career as a professional artist and was employed as an art instructor at Boston University.

Hibbard later founded the Rockport Art Association Summer School of Drawing and Painting (1921-28), also known as the Hibbard School of Painting.  The Rockport Art Association is still in existence today providing art instruction and exhibition opportunities for artists. Recently, they held a special retrospective exhibition featuring the works of Aldro Thompson Hibbard. 

Beginning in the 1920s, Hibbard resided in the Cape Ann, Massachusetts area and spent his winters in Vermont and Jamaica.  Vermont was the locale of many impressionistic winter landscapes for which Hibbard is best known.  In fact, he was so adept at painting snow scenes, a review in the Boston Globe for the 1918 Guild of Boston Artists exhibition noted: "Hibbard is a realist; you feel the reality of everything he paints, but the sentiment, the poetry is there also.  Others paint snow that looks like white paint streaked with blue and yellow. Hibbard paints snow that never looks like anything else but snow...he is...more subtle and more penetrating in his observation of delicate nuances of gray, [and] the phenomenon of light on snow."(1)

Source: (1)Cooley, John L. A.T. Hibbard, N.A.: Artist in Two Worlds. Concord: The Rumford Press, 1968; p. 55.

Aldro Hibbard was born in 1886. He studied at the Massachusetts Normal Art School and also at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School. He was an important founding member of the Rockport Colony as well as a professional baseball player.

Hibbard taught summer classes at his studio in Bearskin Neck from 1920 to 1950. Later he set up a studio in East Jamaica, Vermont and painted winter landscapes, covered bridges and snowy towns in the mountains. Hibbard created a large body of work throughout his long career with a particular sensitivity to light.