WALTER LOFTHOUSE DEAN

Walter Lofthouse Dean was born on June 4, 1854 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He is remembered for his landscapes, coastal scenes, marines, harbors, and boats. Dean entered MIT to study architecture but soon left to enroll in the Massachusetts Normal School (now Massachusetts College of Art). He worked hard and, upon graduation landed a position as a drawing teacher at the Boston Free Evening School. He worked there for two years and left for an appointment at Purdue University in Indiana. Dean’s yearning for the coast led him back to Boston where he worked as a marine artist and, in July of 1874, he met and later married Katie Bates Whiting. He left for Paris in 1882 and studied at the Academie Julian under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. Achile Oudinot, a friend of Corot, was a teacher and friend to Dean for one year. Dean’s studies led him along the coasts of Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, and England before he once again returned to Boston. He kept a summer studio in East Gloucester for almost thirty years and, just a year before his death, he built a house near his studio. Dean worked in his Boston studio during the winter months and then, during the warmer months, he sailed his “studio” along the coast. Exhibitions were sparse up to his early thirties and his first major exhibit was at the Boston Art Club Show of 1887. Dean exhibited with the Boston Art Club from 1879 to 1881 and then again — when he returned from his European studies — from 1886 to 1909. and He died at his home on March 13, 1912 in East Gloucester, Massachusetts. Dean was a member of the Boston Art Club; Paint and Clay Club; Copley Society, 1906; Salmagundi Club, NY; and several Massachusetts North Shore Art Societies. In addition to the Boston Art Club, he exhibited with the National Academy of Design 1881-96; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association, 1887 (medal), 1895 (gold); and the St. Louis Exposition, 1904 (medal). One of Dean’s paintings, Peace, by a legislative act approved May 14, 1928, hangs in an office of the House Committee on Naval Affairs — an appropriate venue for a work produced by a man who lived and worked on and by the sea.