Kenneth Stubbs
(American artist, 1907-1967)

Stubbs watercolors show in Boston

A retrospective exhibition of watercolors by the noted 20th century modern artist Kenneth Stubbs opens from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at ACME Fine Art, 38 Newbury St., Boston. The exhibition will be composed of a group of eight rare watercolors that were painted during the artist's summer sojourns in Provincetown between 1934 and 1965 and will hang through Oct. 6.

Stubbs was a gifted artist and teacher who had an unwavering allegiance to modernism. He studied in Provincetown with E. Ambrose Webster, who is considered by many to be Provincetown's first important modernist. Webster's Summer Art School was the first of numerous art schools on Cape Code to emphasize a modern point of view. Stubbs was one of Webster's most important students, and Webster became a mentor, an inspiration and a colleague. Like his mentor, Stubbs was dedicated to the dissemination of modern ideas through his artwork and teaching. He taught for many years at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Corcoran became an important venue for the exhibition of his work.

In recent years the Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum have mounted retrospective exhibitions of paintings and drawings by Stubbs.

Stubbs was able to grow artistically without ever needing to negate or reject what had gone before. The watercolors that comprise the basis for this exhibition were selected to demonstrate the remarkable arc of Stubbs' growth as an artist, and to reflect the artist's changing points of view.

Provincetown Banner, September 6, 2007, page 43