While his name became synonymous with sporting art, Ripley also enjoyed painting themes of everyday life, often found while exploring the streets of Boston or the more rural scenery of Lexington and other nearby towns. Commonwealth Avenue near Arlington Street, Boston is an appealing example of his non-sporting work, and demonstrates both his brilliant, multi-faceted handling of the watercolor medium and his knack for finding beauty in one’s everyday surroundings. Using a palette of soft colors evoking the springtime subject, Ripley depicted several buildings along Commonwealth Avenue, specifically numbers 21 through 29, situated one block up from Arlington Street. His detailed rendering of the edifices and their architectural embellishments is offset by the painterly, drybrush technique he employed in the flowering trees, and he has also scraped the surface in spots to denote flashes of sunlight along the branches.

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Provenance:

Private collection, Massachusetts

By descent through the family to private collection, Wyoming

To a Texas estate auction, 2015

To private collection, Duxbury, Massachusetts, 2015 to present