With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Frederick Lester Sexton
Painting/Drawing
1889 – 1975
Regionalist
- Biography/Description of Work
Landscape painter, teacher, and lecturer. An American Regionalist from Connecticut, Frederick Sexton seldom traveled farther than 50 miles from his home of New Haven. Of his part of the country, he said: ‘I wonder if one can get any better subjects at any other places. Take our beaches—-our wharves, they are wonderfully interesting. . . We don’t need to go away. Beauty is right here . . .’
Frederick Lester Sexton was born in 1889 in Cheshire, Connecticut. He studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts with Sergeant Kendall, Edwin Taylor, A.V. Tack. He was a Winchester Traveling Fellow in 1915 and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1917. Most of Sexton’s landscapes and still life were painted in the region between New Haven and Old Lyme, Connecticut. He was active with the Old Lyme colony of artists beginning in the late 1920′s and early 1930′s. He painted in a bold but realist Post-Impressionist style, often employing a palette knife. As a baby, he was severely burned in a fire, and, although his right hand was permanently closed, this did not affect his ability to paint throughout his life, or to build his own 28-ft sailing yacht in 1955. After studying at Yale, he served in WW1 as an ambulance driver. Upon his return in 1919, painting became his profession. He also taught widely at schools in the New Haven area.- Sources view
- Uconn database; http://scohenfineart.com/biographies/s/sexton-frederick-lester/
- Associated Resource(s)
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