Alphonse Joseph Shelton

American (1905-1972)

Although marine painter Alphonse Joseph Shelton (1905-1972), was born in Liverpool, England, he moved with his parents to the United States, settling in Boston, while still a child. Shelton received his artistic training at the Boston Museum of Fine Art School where he specialized in portraiture. He was a student of William Lester Stevens as well as Philip Hale.

Shelton soon turned his artistic interests to the sea. He followed the coast northward to Maine, taking residence in the small towns of Southport and Wiscasset, where he lived for more than 25 years. Shelton’s painting talent earned him membership in the Guild of Boston Artists, the Allied Artists of America, the Academic Artist, the Copley Society of Boston, the North Shore Art Association, and the Grand Central Galleries. During his career he exhibited at the Salons of American in 1934 and at the Salon Sanity in Art in 1941 where he was honored with a medal, as well as at the Museum of Fine Art in Springfield, Massachusetts, the National Academy of Design, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, the Farnsworth Museum of Art, and numerous one man shows at galleries throughout the East.

Also a teacher, Shelton molded aspiring artists at the Butera School of Art, as well as teaching at the Farnsworth Art Museum and privately. Shelton was highly involved in the Maine art community, serving for a time as chairman of the Maine Art Commission. His works are housed in numerous private, public, and corporate collections throughout the United States, including the Farnsworth Museum of Art; the Bowdoin College Museum of Art; the Quincy Museum in Illinois; the Sheldon Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana; the National Shawmut Bank collection; First National Bank of Midland, Texas collection; and the Huntington collection. In addition, shortly after Shelton’s death in 1972 the Guild of Boston Artists held a retrospective on his life work entitled “Paintings of the Sea.”