Will Henry Stevens

In 2001, the Will Henry Stevens Memorial Trust via Janet Stevens McDowell, the artist’s daughter, presented the Georgia Museum of Art a large gift of diverse work by the American painter. Stevens was born in Vevay, a small Indiana town along the Ohio River between Louisville and Cincinnati. He studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy, run by Frank Duveneck, worked at Rookwood Pottery and attended classes at the Art Students League in New York with American Impressionists William Merritt Chase and Jonas Lie. In 1921, Stevens was offered a teaching position at Sophie Newcomb College, Tulane University, in New Orleans, Louisiana, which provided him with a stable income for the next 27 years. Although he frequently visited New York during the remainder of his career, Stevens emerged as a regional artist whose works were primarily known in the South until the 1940s. During the 1930s and 1940s, Stevens painted in three modes: an American Scene style, an American abstraction that retained elements of naturalism and a geometric abstraction. In many of the images in this special display, Stevens creates work that demonstrates his interest in the harmonious interconnection between the visible planet and the universal world that exists beyond human senses.