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John
Woodsum Hatch
1919-1998
During his fifty-year career as an artist, John Woodsum Hatch
explored the people, the landscape, and the seascape around
him. From his extensive travels to his years in New Hampshire,
he developed a body of work that captures a sense of place.
Through watercolor, ink and sand, he depicted the grandeur
of the White Mountains. The crisp light and distinct topography
of the Isles of Shoals and Great Bay Estuary are precisely
and clearly documented in acrylic and tempera paintings. His
ability to convey the sheer scale and longevity of the mountains
and sea, and by comparison the fleeting nature of human life,
conveys in a not-so-subtle way that the natural environment
is to be revered and preserved.
Hatch took his first teaching job at the University of New
Hampshire in
1949, the same year he graduated from Yale University. He
never left. A former student, Sam Cady, described his contributions:
He was a wonderful mix of jokester and sage. A teacher
who obviously loved people, loved teaching, and had a great
gift for it. After retiring in 1985, he was made an
honorary Professor Emeritus at UNH.
Hatch contributed to New Hampshire's cultural life in three
areas: his teaching, his art, and his community service. His
effectiveness in these three areas can be traced his commitment
to give something of himself to help others. Many artists
teach by necessity and resent it as a drain on their creative
energies but Hatch found his greatest fulfillment from a combination
of teaching, making art, and being deeply involved with his
community as an art historian and as an environmentalist.
Hatchs work can be seen in numerous public collections,
including: the Addison Gallery of American Art; DeCordova
Museum; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; State of New Hampshire's
Living Treasures Collection, and the Portland Museum of Art
in Maine. John Woodsum Hatch, New Hampshire's 1997 Living
Treasure Award recipient, died on August 6,1998, at the age
of 78.
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Last
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February 12, 2015
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