Paule Stetson Loring Papers (Mss. Gr. 67)

Biographical note

Paule Stetson Loring (1899-1968) was a Rhode island nautical artist who developed an international reputation for his sketches of the sea, an accomplished boater and sailor, and, for several decades, a well-known editorial cartoonist and feature story writer for the Providence Journal-Bulletin.

Born in Maine, the diminutive Loring lived for much of his life at "Loring's Shanty," an artist's and seaman's shanty alongside Wickford Harbor in Wickford, R.I. It was at the shanty that Loring's life and work combined with his love of the people and boats of coastal New England to create well-known and remembered nautical art.

A self-taught artist, Loring began his career, after a series of unrelated odd jobs, when he wandered into the offices of the Springfield (Mass.) Times-Union looking for a job in the early 1920's. Put to work drawing advertisements, Loring made a name for himself with his original caricature of Calvin Coolidge. He moved on to the Providence Journal-Bulletin soon after, and worked there as editorial cartoonist until his retirement in 1962. In retirement Loring continued his tremendous output of cartoon, sketches, and paintings, and his wife calculated that he composed some 10,000 sketches during this life. He had a life-long concern with preserving the maritime heritage contained in old boats, an interest exhibited most strongly in his successful attempt to reconstruct a Block Island "double-ender" sail boat. After Loring's death this boat was donated to the Maritime Museum in Mystic, Connecticut.

This collection of Loring's work contains several hundred examples of the various facets and periods in Loring's career.