Aldro Thompson Hibbard
American
1886-1972
It is difficult to paint a landscape well. The weather is often uncooperative; The light conditions change rapidly; The wind blows at inconvenient times; No two days are exactly alike; And it takes a long time just to cover a canvas with paint and small brushes.
Take all of those variables, and add to them the difficulty of trying to place an accurate drawing on a blank canvas, mixing color, identifying light and shadows, and above all trying to create a work of art, and you start to see some of the challenges of landscape painting. Painting in winter makes it doubly so!
“Snow and oil paint are a hopeless combination” Aldro Hibbard would say casually about the ocassional gust of wind and snow upon the canvas.
Aldro received a Paige Traveling Scholarship to travel and paint freely in Europe for two years when he was in his twenties; he was the only American to ever receive the honor. Although the trip was cut short due to the outbreak of the first World War in Europe, it was an event that deeply impacted his approach to art, nature…and life. He was influenced by the Impressionists and took this view of painting back to the mainland when he returned 14 months later.
Few things in life that are worthwhile come easily, a fact I am sure Hibbard was well aware of. Aldro Hibbard felt it was important to paint the landscape completely on location because he knew that these “challenges” showed up in a picture and help to give it “authenticity”. I suppose he also felt it was important to paint on location because he was friends with several of the leading plein air painters who likewise felt it was important. He painted en plein air for almost 50 years, though rarely strayed further than his two favorite locations in Vermont and Massachusetts.
Hibbard’s early pictures show the broken-brushwork typically found in Impressionist paintings, but he later developed an original approach that was simplified and efficient- more appropriate to the environments he was fond of painting (cold and snow).
Perhaps likened to Jazz (in music), Hibbard and his friends were responsible for helping to create one of the first unique American art forms(in painting) that was recognized world wide; It was a broad style that was fast and loose, but realistic; one where the colors were recognizable almost immediately. It was an art form that was exclusively American in subject, and gave a sense of the people’s values towards hard work and determination, but also their sensitivity to beauty.