Sugar House is a quintessential example of Hibbard’s work, demonstrating the artist’s natural talent for composition and his skill at capturing the subtle gradations of color in snow. The chosen subject also highlights his fascination with industrious Vermonters going about their daily tasks.  In his 1968 book, A. T. Hibbard, N.A.: Artist in Two Worlds, John L. Cooley writes of the syrup-making process, past and present:
  

“Syrup-making was superb material for an artist and Hibbard painted the scene many times, catching it in all poses, even when the shed had started the long vacation that lasted from one late winter to the next. His paintings – the brown and white oxen, the horses, the sleds and sledges with their sweet, sticky burdens, the sugar houses exhaling their white breath, men bundled against the cold, the thin sunlight, shadows, gray tree trunks – captured a precious scene. Vermonters, of course, still make maple syrup and sugar, but plastic pails, spouts, and tubing replace the old equipment, and jeeps chug through the woods, indifferent to depth of snow or thermometer…”I got there just in time,” Hibb chuckled as he reviewed the changes Progress had made in his Vermont.” 

More information about this painting...

Trained at the Boston Museum School, Hibbard carried forth the tenets of traditional academic art into the 20^th century. He exhibited widely in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, and launched himself in the Boston art world with a one-man exhibition at the Boston Art Club in 1916. Three years later, a show of his winter scenes at the Guild of Boston Artists received glowing reviews.

Hibbard had long been interested in snow-covered landscapes, and at the recommendation of fellow Boston artist and Fenway Studios resident William J. Kaula, he first traveled to Vermont in 1915 and was immediately taken with the mountains, valleys, and charming residents of the region. By the 1930s, Hibbard established a schedule of spending the winter months in Vermont, and the rest of the year in Rockport, Massachusetts, where he had earlier established the Rockport Summer School of Drawing and Painting. He grew to become a legendary member of the North Shore artists’ colony.

A leader in the community, he remained active in nearby Boston, and in 1965 the Guild of Boston Artists, where Hibbard had exhibited for 45 years, mounted a retrospective exhibition of his work.

Provenance:

Private Southern collection

To Rockport Art Association, Rockport, Massachusetts

To private collection, Reading, Massachusetts, until October 2014

With Vose Galleries, Boston, inventory no. 36374, October 2014

To private collection, Wicomico Church, Virginia, October 2014 until present

Labels:

1. Rockport Art Association / Aldro T. Hibbard, N. A. / Sept. 27 – October 27, 1996
2. (handwritten) Aldro T. Hibbard N.A. / “Sugar House” oil – 30” x 36”, plus frame / 2007 Past and Present Exhibition / N.S.A.A. Aug, Sept.
3. Previous Vose Galleries label, inventory no. 36374

Exhibitions:

1. Aldro T. Hibbard, N.A., Rockport Art Association, Massachusetts, September 27 – October 27, 1996
2. The Past and the Present, Time and Space Cannot Separate Them: Celebrating 85 Years of the North Shore Arts Association, Gloucester, Massachusetts, Summer 2007