Maria J.C. A’ Becket: Rediscovering an American Artist

Abstract

Maria J.C. a’ Becket (or Beckett, as she originally spelled her name) got her start as an artist in Portland, Maine and moved on to new venues in Boston, New York, Bar Harbor, and St.Augustine. She studied in France with well-known Barbizon School landscape painters and returned to American to develop a distinctly personal and American version of the genre. Although her work and legacy are obscure today, Becket was a pioneer professional woman painter and arguably the ?rst woman to build a career as a landscape painter by popularizing the Barbizon style in America. Christopher Volpe moved to New England from Long Island, earned a graduate degree in poetry at the University of New Hampshire, and worked as a professional writer and teacher before falling in love with American landscape painting while teaching a class in art history. His paintings are exhibited and sold through regional galleries and juried shows, and he teaches at the New Hampshire Institute of Art and Chester College of New England.