About the Artist

Born in the Boston area, George W.W. Brewster graduated from Harvard’s School of Design. Shortly thereafter, he began a career in architecture, briefly working with others and then heading his own firm, which generated both regional and national acclaim, including a very public commendation by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Brewster was born in 1907. While his Boston birth record shows only Wales as a middle name, he was -- or became -- in fact George Washington Wales Brewster, Jr., his name echoing that of his surgeon father.

George married Joan Ryerson during the heart of the Depression. A graduate of Philips Exeter Academy and Harvard, he became an architect of considerable skill and reputation, studying first at MIT and then Harvard Architectural School; during his student years in the 1930s, he worked for Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott; William Lescaze; and William T. Aldrich.

By 1938, he had established his own office on Boston's Newbury Street. A document of the Brookline Preservation Commission notes that he "designed a variety of houses, in a modern and New England idiom"; that he "won the BSA prize in 1935 and the Boston Arts Festival First Award in 1954 for the J. Gordon Gibbs House" in the town of Marion; and that he received other awards in the mid-1950s.

Having intended to study painting in college, he returned to his passion, closing his architectural firm in the 1960s. He studied under Barbara Swann in Boston and developed a distinctive semi-abstract style, predominantly portraying landscapes which combine elements of land, shore, water and sky.

His paintings are in the Farnsworth Museum, Portland Museum, and Harvard University as well as in many private collections in the United States.

George W. W. Brewster passed away in February of 1981.

Download Full Biography