By Peter F. Stevens

In 1906, his skills as a ball-hawking centerfielder and skilled batsman for Dorchester High were the proverbial talk of the town. Many locals thought Aldro Hibbard possessed the tools to play in the big leagues. His fans were right - but not in the way they envisioned.

Aldro T. Hibbard did star in the major leagues, but did not do so with the bat and glove that made him a "man to watch" on the diamond. Instead, he parlayed another talent, one that he had honed in part in his Dorchester High drawing classes, to garner acclaim.

With brush in hand, Hibbard painted a reputation as one of the most talented American Impressionist of the 20th century.

On August 25, 1886, Aldrovandi Thompson Hibbard was born in Falmouth, the son of sewing-machine salesman James Hibbard and Katherine Hibbard, a well-educated, artistic woman with a profound love of nature that she would instill in her son. His grandiose name - Aldrovandi - came from Katherine's admiration for the work of the Renaissance naturalist.

The family moved first to Roxbury and then to Dorchester when Aldrovandi T. Hibbard was a child, and throughout his childhood and teens, the family would return to the Cape for the summers. In Dorchester, two pronounced talents - drawing and baseball &emdash;began to bloom in the boy, who shortened his name to "Aldro." His deft touch with a charcoal pencil and his equally adroit work on paper and on the diamond would lead his many friends in Dorchester to "smilingly observe that he seemed to have been born with anartist's pencil in one hand and a baseball bat in the other."

In his teens, Hibbard was smacking local pitchers' offerings all over the town's fields and displaying his landscape drawings and paintings in exhibitions where they fetched prices of up to $10. He was a rising star on the ball field by the time he began his studies at Dorchester High, one of the era's most state-of-the-art public schools, and spent many hours flagging fly balls hit by friends and coaches and grooving his smooth swing against their offerings from the mound. Blessed with speed and sound baseball instincts, he would prove a force for the Dorchester High nine.

Hibbard enjoyed a memorable senior year, in 1906. He was a popular student-athlete whose classmates included a vivacious young woman and whose father was one of Boston's most prominent personalities and politicians. Her name was Rose Fitzgerald.

His talent for drawing and art courses far exceeded those of his classmates - and arguably any future graduates of the school &emdash; and his burgeoning skills on the baseball field made him the star and captain of the school's squad. As graduation loomed, Hibbard had a decision to make - to continue chasing fly balls or to chase a career as an artist. Although neither choice came with any degreeof certain success, Hibbard approached his dilemma with an innate confidence in his ability and with a remarkable work ethic. Baseball's possible loss proved the art world's gain.

In the fall of 1906, Hibbard enrolled at the Massachusetts Normal Art School, perched on Beacon Hill and noted for its grueling four-year course.

A biographer of Hibbard writes: "It was three miles from home [Dorchester], but he walked to it and back every day. He was totally dedicated to learning and mastering every detail of his chosen profession; he never skipped classes or took days off. Evenings he toiled at various after-hours tohelp meet tuition costs. His stamina and capacity for work astonished all who knew him. On Sundays he shouldered palette and easel and walked [from Dorchester] into the Blue Hills to paint landscapes."

Hibbard was accepted in 1909 to the prestigious Museum Art School at the Museum of Fine Arts, and graduated in 1913 with a noteworthy achievement in hand - the $1,500 Paige Traveling Scholarship for two years of study in

Europe. With that sum, a considerable amount of money for the era, the aspiring artist from Dorchester set out from Boston aboard the White Star liner Arabic on September 23, 1913.

For the next 11 months or so, Hibbard studied, drew, and painted in England, France, Spain, and Italy, especially poring over the works of the great Impressionists, and, his interest in Nature driving his work inlarge measure, he gravitated more and more to their style of painting. In his treks to the Blue Hills and in his love of Cape Cod, the evolution of Hibbard as an Impressionist had materialized and now took finite shape in Europe.

An art historian notes: "Visiting [Europe]…he [Hibbard] gained close acquaintance with the greatest paintings of the masters of those countries. He had already, from what he had seen in America of the works of Monet and others of the Impressionist movement, come to consider himself an adherent of it. This feeling was further confirmed by his experiences in France, thoughmuch of his work is not strictly impressionist in style."

Several key events in Hibbard's career unfolded in his European sojourn. In the winter of1913-14, his meetings with the famed Spanish realist painter Joaquin Sorollaled helped the Dorchester artist develop his use of color. Hibbard, in Spain, also attempted to pain tfor the first time in a snowstorm - a harbinger of his future and famous winter landscapes.

In August 1914, the First World War exploded across Europe, and Hibbard fled back home aboard the Arabic. He arrived in Boston on Thanksgiving. Hibbard, wading into the realm of the "struggling artist,soon opened a studio in Boston, where he worked to create his own style of painting.

As one of his biographers states, "It was slow going in the first several years, as sales and commissions were few; and he had to rely on pupils- though he never really enjoyed teaching - for most of his income; butcritical acclaim from art reviewers was boosting his repute."

In 1931, in the throes of the Great Depression, the National Academy of Art awarded him $2,500 for his painting "Rockport in Winter"; the stipend allowed him to the weather gloomy financial juncture.

Eventually, Hibbard's New England landscapes and snowscapes earned him the notable reputation that his talent merited, and he moved alittle ways north from Dorchester and Boston to the artist's haven of Rockport, where he soon settled down with his wife, Winifred Jackman, one of his former students.

Hibbard, in Rockport, found not only inspiration for his painting, but also for an old love, baseball, by founding a town team andserving as its player/manager. Although he was in his late thirties, spectators quickly learned that vestiges of his one-time prowess on Dorchester's diamonds remained: "[He] still covered a lot of ground in centerfield and had a sharp eye at the plate."

His loveaffair with the game would continue until his death, in November 1972. Today, Aldro T. Hibbard's large output of work, capturing all manner and hues of light and shadow from New England's coast, to Vermont's valleys and mountains, to the Isle of Capri's renowned "Blue Grotto" and many other locations hangs in numerous galleries and collections. Art historians and critics have deemed him a noteworthy American Impressionist, but Dorchester friends and neighbors of his youth also remembered Aldro Hibbard as a ballplayer.

(Journalist Peter F. Stevens is the author of TheRogue's March: John Riley and the St. Patrick's Battalion, 1846-48, Brassey's,and Notorious and Notable New Englanders, Down East Books.)