Aiden Lassell Ripley was born and spent the majority of his life in Boston, Massachusetts. He began studying music, his father’s specialization, and later turned to painting. He was trained at the Fenway School of Illustration and also the Boston Museum School. In 1924, he won a Paige Traveling Fellowship that enabled him to paint for two years in Africa, France and Holland. The bulk paintings from this period depicted the landscapes of these locations and of his native New England. An avid oil and watercolor painter, Ripley began his career painting landscapes; he included sportsmen in his paintings during the Great Depression at the suggestion of a hunting companion. Ripley reluctantly complied at first, but eventually embraced the genre of the sporting scene as his subject. This change is what earned Ripley the reputation as one of America’s foremost painters of upland shooting scenes and game birds. He later served as President of the Guild of Boston Artists from 1960 until his death in 1969. An excellent hunter and angler, Ripley was also an active conservationist. He served on the town board of Lexington, Massachusetts, and, in that capacity, pressed for local preservation of wildlife. In addition to the representation of upland game birds, sportsmen, anglers and bird dogs, his works offer an accurate record of mid-twentieth century American scenery.
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