The following was submitted as a bulletin by Dik Wesson:

My dad was born in 1902 in Worcester, MA. He was an only child of a housewife and a patent attorney. His dad was in fact the patent attorney for the Bazooka used in WWII. His mother taught him art yet he never went to a formal art school. He was a professional dentist, an accomplished photographer, a fanatical orchid grower and obviously an extremely good artist (my opinion) painting landscapes, sea scenes and portraits.

He graduated from Clark College and Harvard University Dental School, Class of 28 and worked professionally, all his life in Kenmore Square, Boston. He painted weekends and every evening after dinner in a studio that was a part of our Wellesley Hills residence. His work stemmed from photographs taken in Northern New England but mostly in Vermont. In his studio he would take from one picture a team of oxen, another a church, a winding brook and bridge and run down barn. Together they made up the work that was later gifted or sold.

Needless to say I doubt that there is a place that you could identify as being the one represented by his work I recall that he once sold a painting to the Snow's Clam Chowder corporation to be used as a calendar. The sales price was $300. The following year a Snow's advertising campaign produced the calendar which parties of interest could purchase for the sum of $1 plus a label from a Snow's product. We later learned that Snows sold over 1 million copies of the calendar. No one ever said that my Dad was a business man.

Prior to his death he was commissioned, but never completed a painting of the first public demonstration of of the use of ether at Mass General Hospital. The work depicts Wm T. Morton, a dentist, demonstrating the anesthetic in 1846. It hangs, I believe, in the offices of the American Dental Society in Chicago.

Impressionist landscape painter, Robert Shaw Wesson (1902-1967) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He studied at Clark and Harvard and with Woodward, Connaway, etc.

He is known for his snow scenes, which have established him as one of New Englands finest artists of the 20th century.

Source:
G. Eldridge Antiques