Helena Sturtevant is best known for her light-filled paintings of the historic buildings and scenic coastline of her native Rhode Island.  Although born in Middleton, Rhode Island, Sturtevant had a studio on the grounds of her grandmother’s estate in Newport, and often painted the International Cup Races off of the coast.

In a review of an exhibition of Sturtevant’s work at the Copley Gallery, Boston, in 1909, the critic writes, “Miss Sturtevant has liking for effects of light in nature. Indeed it is among the best of her qualities… one feels that the artist has a very genuine interest in nature.”1

She was a pupil of Edmund Tarbell at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, and later studied at the Académie Colarossi in Paris with Blanche and L. Simon.  She exhibited her work at Boston’s Copley Galleries, the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Paris Salon of 1927, the 1939 World’s Fair in New York and the 1939 San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition. 

Sturtevant was director of the School of the Art Association of Newport, and a member of the American Federation of Arts, the National Association of Women Artists and the American Artists Professional League.  Her work is held in the collections of the Newport City Hall, the Berkeley Memorial Chapel in Newport and the New York Public Library.

References: Falk, Who Was Who in American Art, (1999).

1 Unidentified news clipping, possibly Boston Transcript, dated November 15, 1909. Boston MFA Artists Files.