Lee Lufkin was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. She went to New York City to study painting with Charles Melville Dewey before traveling to Paris with her friend Claire Shuttleworth in 1894, where she studied at the Academie Colarossi with Edmond Aman-Jean and received encouragement from Charles Gruppe. In 1897 she exhibited at the Salon de La Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris and she painted throughout Europe but concentrated on depicting scenes in and around London, England. In Crecy, she met Boston painter William J. Kaula, whom she married in 1902. The Kaulas were among the first occupants at the Fenway Studio Building on Ipswich Street in Boston. There studio was a large corner apartment #311, where the couple worked side-by-side until William's death (1953). The couple painted and summered in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and both painters were extremely influenced by the work of Edmund C. Tarbell, leader of the Boston school of painting, who strongly urged his devotees to paint academically correct figures within Vermeer-like interiors.
Lee Lufkin Kaula was an active members of the circle of female painters in Boston who were inspired by and worked alongside of Edmund C. Tarbell, Joseph DeCamp and Frank W. Benson (all who taught at the Museum School). She joined the Copley Society, the Guild of Boston Artists, the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters, the National Association of Woman Painters & Sculptors (NY) and the New York Women's Art Club, and by 1905 she was well known for her interiors in which women and children perform genteel daily tasks within rooms that infiltrate with light. From 1914-1915 she exhibited at the Maine Art Gallery and in 1925 at the Connecticut Gallery of Art.
Lee and her husband William are considered member of the Boston school of painting (1880-1913) and are often dubbed "Tarbellites" because of their close association with Edmund C. Tarbell. William eventually turned to painting impressionistic New Hampshire landscapes and although Lee painted street scenes in Europe she was primarily known for her interior genres depicting women of leisure.
Reference: Pierce, Patricia Jobe, Edmund C. Tarbell & the Boston School of Painting (1980); Paul Sternberg, Art by American Women (1991); Who’s Who in American Art (1940, American Art Annual)
