​J. N. BARTFIELD GALLERIES

Arthur Shilstone  b. 1922

 

When Ed Gray, founder of America’s most important sporting magazine Gray’s Sporting Journal, wanted to select an artist to illustrate his definitive book on fly fishing, Flashes in the River, he chose Arthur Shilstone. This came as no surprise to fly fishing connoisseurs of art, who often refer to him as today’s Ogden Pleissner. Shilstone’s distinguished career has spanned some six decades. After graduating from high school, Arthur enrolled at Pratt Institute but enlisted when the United States entered World War II. Assigned to the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, which specialized in deceiving the enemy through special effects and deploying regiments of inflatable tanks Shilstone participated in numerous offensives after D-Day. After the war, Shilstone went to work for Life magazine, covering the Sam Shepard Murder Trial, the funeral of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the investigation into the sinking of the Andrea Doria and the Brown vs. the Board of Education case. Shilstone’s watercolors have illustrated articles in Smithsonian, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and The New York Times magazine, among many others. He is an award winning member of the American Watercolor Society and the Society of Illustrators. His paintings for Smithsonian captured the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Normandy, and the air evacuation of wounded soldiers during the Korean war. For NASA, Shilstone did a series of paintings of the Space Shuttle. His artwork has helped to define our view of history. In the 1970‘s, Arthur Shilstone began to paint sporting scenes. His feel for the rhythms of light and shadow and the interplay of colors in a fishing or shooting scene places him in the pantheon of American sporting artists alongside Homer, Frost, Pleissner and Ripley.  Shilstone’s sporting pictures are not, first and foremost, about sport. Rather, they are about Nature and weather, time of year and time of day, and the fleeting moments of connection between sportsman and quarry., founder of America’s most important sporting magazine Gray’s Sporting Journal, wanted to select an artist to illustrate his definitive book on fly fishing, Flashes in the River, he chose Arthur Shilstone. This came as no surprise to fly fishing connoisseurs of art, who often refer to him as today’s Ogden Pleissner. Shilstone’s distinguished career has spanned some six decades. After graduating from high school, Arthur enrolled at Pratt Institute but enlisted when the United States entered World War II. Assigned to the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, which specialized in deceiving the enemy through special effects and deploying regiments of inflatable tanks Shilstone participated in numerous offensives after D-Day. After the war, Shilstone went to work for Life magazine, covering the Sam Shepard Murder Trial, the funeral of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the investigation into the sinking of the Andrea Doria and the Brown vs. the Board of Education case. Shilstone’s watercolors have illustrated articles in Smithsonian, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and The New York Times magazine, among many others. He is an award winning member of the American Watercolor Society and the Society of Illustrators. His paintings for Smithsonian captured the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Normandy, and the air evacuation of wounded soldiers during the Korean war. For NASA, Shilstone did a series of paintings of the Space Shuttle. His artwork has helped to define our view of history. In the 1970‘s, Arthur Shilstone began to paint sporting scenes. His feel for the rhythms of light and shadow and the interplay of colors in a fishing or shooting scene places him in the pantheon of American sporting artists alongside Homer, Frost, Pleissner and Ripley.  Shilstone’s sporting pictures are not, first and foremost, about sport. Rather, they are about Nature and weather, time of year and time of day, and the fleeting moments of connection between sportsman and quarry.

 

 

 

 

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