LEE LUFKIN KAULA

Impressionist painter of portraits, figures, and landscapes, Lee Lufkin Kaula was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1865. She first studied with Charles Melville Dewey in New York and then in Paris with Edmond Aman-Jean at the Académie Colarossi in 1894. In 1902 Lufkin married artist William Jurian Kaula (1871-1953), whom she had met in Crecy, while they were both studying in France. The artist couple held their first joint exhibition at the Cobb Gallery in Boston in 1904. William and Lee were among the first artists–along with the other painters now known as the Boston School–to move into the living-studio space of the new Fenway Studio Building, completed in 1905 at 30 Ipswich Street. The Kaulas worked and resided at the Fenway Studios from 1905 to 1953. They summered in Ipswich, New Hampshire from 1916 through 1957.
Lee Lufkin Kaula is best known for her portraits of women in elegant costume and beautiful children. She also became known for luminous landscapes and village scenes. Kaula was a photographer as well; she documented many of the couple’s trips through Europe and New England both in photographs and in drawings. She was a member of the National Association of Women Artists, the Copley Society, the Guild of Boston Artists, and the Boston Society of Watercolorists. She exhibited at the Paris Salons of 1897 and 1898; the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in 1901; the Pan-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915; and at the Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia in 1926. The artist’s work was also exhibited at the Plastic Club, Philadelphia; the Boston Art Club; the Poland Spring Art Gallery in Maine; the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts in Hartford; the Art Institute of Chicago, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and the National Academy of Design. Kaula’s work can be seen in the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. Her paintings are also held in private collections across the United States.