THOMAS R. CURTIN
Thomas Curtin was born in Pittsfield Mass. November 15, 1899. He received his early education in the Pittsfield Public School System under the tutelage of George H. Dennison who recognized his potential. A friendship developed from student-teacher relationship and oils by Dennison occupied a place of honor in Curtin’s home for all his lifetime.
Subsequent studies were at the National Academy of Design In New York,
1899-1977
the Art Student League of New York and the Vesper George School in Boston. While at the Art Student’s League, he was a student of John F. Carlson and again a friendship grew that continued with weekend painting trips that terminated only with the untimely passing of Carlson in the mid nineteen forties.
Pursuing his craft with other such friends as W.M. Lester Stevens, Aldro T. Hibbard, Emile Gruppe, George Gardner Symons, Leo Blake, Steve Maniotti, Ken Gore and Paul Strisik; he continually worked at improving his skills of depicting New England’s beauty.He replaced Dennison as the Art Instructor in the Pittsfield School System. Summers were spent in Gloucester or Rockport Massachusetts where he studied the effect of sunlight and shadow on the rocky coast and waters of New England and learned to accurately reflect the unique and wild beauty OF THIS COASTLINE.
Weekends were devoted to trips to various spots in Massachusetts or Vermont where he could meet friends in a friendly competition to see who would capture a design and depict the beauty of the hills streams and valleys in Fall, Winter and Spring.
A member of various art associations in New England, he exhibited at the North Shore Arts Association (1930’s), the Pittsfield Art League, where he served as president, the Berkshire Artist’s Association, the Rockland Artist’s Association and the Southern Vermont Artist’s Association among others.
He retired from his teaching position in 1957 and moved to the Jeffersonville, Vermont area where he had a gallery in Cambridge and where he devoted the remaining tears of his life to the pleasures of putting the beauty of Vermont through the four seasons on his canvases and to the simple joys of life in a small rural community. There he lived and painted until his death in 1977 back in his home town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts.