From the booklet's contents:Winchester, Massachusetts, has been the home and the inspiration of many artists during the past two centuries. Some spent their lives here, while others passed but a few years within the community. During their times here, several left artworks in Winchester or otherwise left an imprint upon the community. In return, the community played a role in the artists' lives and work.
The study profiles several Winchester artists who achieved some reputation locally and for whom information is available from Winchester sources. These biographies are not intended to be comprehensive nor to include every person who may have practiced an art within Winchester's boundaries. They highlight the artists' local activities but leave critical evaluation of their work to the readers, who may themselves examine the artworks in three Winchester collections listed at the end of the book.
The study begins about the year 1850, when Winchester was incorporated. Profiling only artists born in the nineteenth century, it concludes a century later in the year of the Winchester Art Association's Centennial Art Exhibit.
Contributions to Winchester's art heritage have been made by professional and amateur artists alike. Most of the artists profiled below were professionals, many of whom achieved distinguished careers, including national and international recognition. Others were amateurs earning a measure of local distinction and reputation. All of their profiles follow in chronological order, leading to the moment when the community's artists, hitherto working as individuals, came together to form the Winchester Art Association.
Some artists cannot be profiled, for their names alone are known or because even their names have been lost to memory and written record. However, occasional artworks do remain to attest to a more active local artistic life than the biographies herein relate. A prized example of an anonymous painting is the 1845 view of Winchester, then South Woburn, showing the area that is now the town center, including Mill Pond (by which the first house was built) and :he First Congregational Church. The painting, which hangs in the public library, is owned by the Winchester Historical Society. A color reproduction appears on the box of the two-volume History of Winchester.
J. Foxcroft Cole, View on the Aberjona The Artists:
Charles Hubbard
Charles Pressey
Edward A. Brackett
J. Foxcroft Cole
Annie C. Nowell
Helen Pressey
Walter F. Brackett
Edmund H. Garrett
Gustave Belichon
Eva D. Cowdery
Francis E. Getty
William H. Warren Bicknell
H. Dudley Murphy
Charles and Maurice Prendergast
Esther Mabel Baldwin Williams
Adelaide Cole Chase
Ernest Dudley Chase
Ettore Caser
Gerrit A. Beneker
Otis Philbrick
Elizabeth M. Lobinger
