Bidspirit auction | Laurence Sisson: Sunset

Laurence Sisson: Sunset - Laurence Sisson (American, 1928-2015): Sunset, 1952. Oil on masonite, signed and dated lower right, framed. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Laurence Sisson became a landscape painter and illustrator. He studied at Yale Summer School and was artist-in-residence at Publick House in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and in 1955 became Director of the Portland, Maine School of Fine and Applied Art. He is known for his paintings of the Maine coast and landscapes of the southwest. His style ranges from plein air watercolors to large oil landscapes with abstract and surrealist elements. Sisson describes this period of his painting as when he began ”designing nature.” His work appears to be a response to traditional Asian landscape painting, his Yankee sensibility and western art training at Yale summer school. His landscapes of both Maine and the southwest are inspired by real locations, but are in fact imaginary landscapes.