File:ALDRO T. HIBBARD (AMERICAN 1886 – 1972).jpg

English: Hibbard was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts and grew up in the Boston suburbs of Roxbury and Dorchester. He studied art at the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design) with Ernest Lee Major, Joseph DeCamp, and Frederic Andrew Bosley. He also studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School (School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts) with American Impressionists Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank W. Benson, Philip Hale, and later with Leslie P. Thompsen after the resignation of Tarbell and Benson. Interestingly, Hibbard was a talented baseball player who turned down opportunities to play professionally in order to follow a career in art. While a student at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts he received the Paige Traveling Scholarship to study abroad for the years 1913 through 1915. Although he had the opportunity to travel through France, Spain, Morocco and Italy, the onset of World War I in July, 1914 forced him to return to Boston early. He was hired as an art instructor at Boston University as he pursued his own art interest which was painting New England winter scenes. He bought a home in West River valley town of Jamaica, Vermont. In 1919 Hibbard established a studio in an old livery stable in Rockport, Massachusetts at the tip of the Cape Ann peninsula. Thereafter, he would spend his summers at Rockport teaching summer classes at his later studio on Bearskin Neck, and his winters in Jamaica where he would capture the harsh winters on canvas en plein air, although he also painted winter scenes of Rockport. It his winter scenes for which he best known. Hibbard also maintained a studio at the Fenway Studios on Ipswich Street in Boston. He was a founding member of the Rockport Art Association Summer School of Drawing and Painting (later The Hibbard School of Painting) and its first Director (1921-1928). He also served as the Association’s President from 1937 to 1943. Hibbard was a member of the Guild of Boston Artists; National Academy of Design (NYC); Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts; Rockport Art Association; New Haven Paint & Clay Club; North Shore Art Association (MA); Salmagundi Club (NYC); North Shore Art Association, Gloucester (MA); Copley Society of Boston; Audubon Society of Artists (NYC); Allied Artists of America (NYC); American Artists Professional League (NYC); Academy of American Artists (Springfield, MA) and the Hudson Valley Art Association. In addition to the Paige traveling Scholarship, Hibbard was a recipient of the Benjamin Altman Prize (National Academy of Design); Julius Hallgarten Prize (National Academy of Design); and the Jennie Sesnan Gold Medal, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA).