ALDRO HIBBARD grew up in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and was trained at the

Massachusetts Normal Art School, under Joseph Decamp, and at the Boston

Museum School, under Edmund Tarbell. He traveled through Europe in 1913

and 1914. Several exhibitions in Boston after his return established his

reputation, and he began annual sojourns to the mountains and the shore.

Vermont and Rockport, Massachusetts, as Hibbard’s principal painting

locations, constituted a ​“complete” New England, at least for those who

purchased his work from 1915 through 1965.

 

As one might expect, spending

winters in Vermont, he specialized in snow scenes, featuring activities such

as logging and maple sugar gathering. He discovered Rockport in 1919, not

long after he had begun painting in Vermont. For the next thirty years he

taught artists and amateurs alike to see the Massachusetts coast as a familiar,

old-fashioned place — as quintessentially New England as snow-covered

Vermont.