Curator and Artist in Conversation: William Trost Richards' Watercolors and Gift Giving
To coincide with the exhibition One After Another: Series and Studies, join us for a conversation about watercolor landscapes and gift giving.
Lea C. Stephenson, Kenneth R. Woodcock Curator of Historical American Art at PAFA, and artist and instructor in the Fine Arts Certificate Program Douglas Martenson will discuss William Trost Richards and his late nineteenth-century watercolor landscapes of Rhode Island. Richards created jewel-like watercolors for his patron, Philadelphia industrialist and art collector George Whitney, which became a visual testament to the friendship between artist and patron. Sharing their perspectives as a curator and artist, Stephenson and Martenson will illuminate artist-patron relationships and how Richards was at the forefront of the American watercolor movement as artists experimented with the medium to capture natural details and paint outdoors.
Martenson has served the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for thirty years as a professor of Drawing and Painting and currently teaches in the Fine Arts Certificate Program.
This talk coincides with the exhibition One After Another: Series and Studies, where Richards’ Rhode Island watercolors will be on view.
Watercolors by William Trost Richards
William Trost Richards
Joseph Wharton's House, on Conanicut Island, 1884
Watercolor and Chinese white on paper.
Gift of Dorrance H. Hamilton in memory of Samuel M.V. Hamilton, 2008.5.95.
William Trost Richards
Morning at Rough Point, Newport, 1877.
Watercolor and Chinese white on paper.
Gift of Dorrance H. Hamilton in memory of Samuel M.V. Hamilton, 2008.5.19.
William Trost Richards
On the Cliff, Looking Inland, Newport, 1876.
Watercolor and Chinese white on paper.
Gift of Dorrance H. Hamilton in memory of Samuel M.V. Hamilton, 20085.5.15.
About the speakers
Dr. Lea Stephenson is an art historian, who is currently the Kenneth R. Woodcock Curator of Historical American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
She oversees PAFA’s collection from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century and serves as the co-curator of A Nation of Artists, a landmark exhibition and reinstallation that explores new ideas and interpretations of American art through the 18th century to the contemporary world.
Stephenson’s work has focused on nineteenth-century American art, particularly American artists traveling and working internationally. Her work has appeared in academic journals, edited volumes, and exhibition catalogs, where she explored topics including PAFA’s first 1807 exhibition, Aesthetic Movement interiors, and Gilded Age portrait miniatures. Prior to joining PAFA, Stephenson held curatorial positions and fellowships at Historic Deerfield, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Preservation Society of Newport County, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Clark Art Institute.
She recently completed her PhD in Art History at the University of Delaware in 2025, where her dissertation explored late nineteenth-century Egyptomania among American artists and collectors. Before her PhD, Stephenson completed her BA in Art History at Temple University and MA at the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art.
Doug Martenson, who since 1978 has made his home in Philadelphia, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, his studio is a three-story row house located in the Dickenson Square area of Philadelphia his home is in Chestnut Hill.
Martenson summers in Maine in a farmhouse located on 17 acres facing Cadillac Mountain and Blue Hill Bay. Martenson has been the recipient of many grants and awards including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship and several individual creative opportunity stipends from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Pew Fellowship on the Arts grant for study at the Vermont Studio Center in northern Vermont and a Cresson European traveling Scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
He has exhibited widely and shown his works regularly in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Martenson has curated two exhibitions for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: Landscapes Modern to Contemporary in 2019 and The Artist’s Response to Nature: Tonalism, Historical to Contemporary in 2016. Martenson was a Lecturer teaching Figure Drawing and Human Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania for 20 years and is a Professor of Fine Arts Teaching Figure Drawing, Figure Painting, Still Life, Landscape and Critic at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Since 1990 Martenson has been a sculpture conservator working on Projects throughout Philadelphia, Washington DC, New York City and San Antonio Texas. Major clients include: University of Pennsylvania, Saint Joesph’s University, Woodmere Art Museum, San Antonio Art Museum, City of Philadelphia.
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