John Calvin Stevens had a sense for the dramatic.

We see it in the clues he left behind, the riddles that evoke delight in those who solve them and make others cock their heads in curious wonder.

We see them in his paintings, on view early this summer at the Art Gallery at the University of New England in Portland. For many paintings, Stevens signed his name with something of a hieroglyph – a symbol of his signature that he derived by making a negative of the initials of his name, JCS.

We see his flair in the shingle-style cottages and Colonial revival buildings that he designed, 1,000 or more across Maine and 300 on the Portland peninsula alone. He left his mark – his signature – in the sweeping curves and perfectly proportioned lines. In certain homes, he instructed stonemasons to include a slab to protrude from above the mantle, on which Stevens would rest a portrait of the home or a landscape that he painted as a gift for his client.

With “The Paintings of John Calvin Stevens,” we get fuller understanding of Stevens as a man and what motivated him. These paintings, which he completed over two solid decades, from about 1900 to 1920 during the height of his career as an architect, were done for pleasure and for fun, and became the focus on his sacred Sunday outings with his painter friends.

Painting was fun, but Stevens was serious about it, and the UNE exhibition makes a case that Maine’s best-known architect also was a pretty good painter. He made engaging oil paintings of the landscape and the sea, and was counted in the same class of painters as fellow Portlanders George Morse and Charles Kimball, who achieved commercial and critical success.

Stevens was always at the center of Portland art’s scene, and remains so with a legacy that includes direct associations with both the Portland Museum of Art and Winslow Homer, whose Prouts Neck studio Stevens himself designed.

His architectural practice continues. Stevens’ great-grandson, Paul S. Stevens, who helps steward the firm with the family name, spoke about his great-grandfather at the UNE opening. He invoked his great-grandfather’s penchant for poetry and cited his patriarch’s love of family and commitment to community, tales of which are preserved in family scrapbooks that include hand-written verse that “reveal much about his personal life away from his busy architectural practice, illustrating his droll sense of humor as well as his love of family, devotion to friends, politics, generosity, and patriotism,” Stevens said in remarks prepared for the opening.

State historian Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. co-curated the UNE show, with Paul Stevens. John Calvin Stevens has been a three-decade concern of Shettleworth’s and driving source of inspiration for as long. Former Portland Museum director John Holverson asked Shettleworth to lecture about Stevens on the 100th anniversary of the PMA, in 1982. Stevens was active in the formation of the Portland Society of Art, which later became the Portland Museum of Art.

Halverson wanted Shettleworth to talk not about Stevens as an architect or leading cultural figure of his time, but as a painter. Halverson understood what a pivotal figure Stevens was, but wanted Shettleworth to find out what motivated him and what drove his creative passion.

In his research, Shettleworth became friends with John Calvin Stevens II, the architect’s grandson. Their lives overlapped 32 years, and Shettleworth drew first-hand knowledge of Stevens from his grandson.

The lecture went well, and Shettleworth filed it away in a desk drawer, hoping someday for the opportunity to revisit the subject of Stevens as painter.

The 50th anniversary of Greater Portland Landmarks provided the chance. Greater Portland Landmarks is cop-presenter of the show, along with UNE.

While Stevens showed his paintings frequently during his life, the UNE show is the first comprehensive exhibition of Stevens’ paintings since his death in 1940. It includes more than 60 paintings, most of them oils, a dozen drawings and a dozen sketchbooks. Most have been in private collections, and not seen publicly in generations.

“Seventy-five years have intervened since the artist died,” Shettleworth said. “These paintings have made their way throughout the family and other private hands. He gave a few paintings to clients and sold a few, but the great majority of the work he produced remained in his family. They’ve been distributed among children and then down through the generations.”

Reunited for this summer show, the paintings tell the story of Portland and its environs in the early 1900s, as seen through the eyes of one man. Stevens was a dedicated Sunday painter. He went out with a group of friends called the Brush’uns, from about 1902 to 1917. They went across Portland in all seasons and all weather.

The UNE exhibition includes many scenes from Delano Park in Cape Elizabeth, Stroudwater and the Casco Bay islands.

What’s most interesting to Shettleworth is that it was during the height of Stevens’ architectural career, when he was in his 50s, that he peaked as a painter, and seemed to express as much passion for painting as for his architectural pursuit. He was prolific and dedicated, and made space in his life for painting during a time when he was pulled in many directions.

A reporter wrote of him in 1917, “His favorite pastime is to get into a suit of old clothes, pull a soft hat down over his eyes, and tramp over the Cape, stopping wherever he finds one of those rugged bits of scenery which have made our coast famous.”

He was described as having a “splendid dome of a head” with deeply set eyes and shaggy brows. He had a Van Dyke beard and droopy mustache. When he painted, he often wore a sombrero and flannel shirt.

A budding poet, Stevens wrote of his Brush’uns friends,

“He lugs a canvas, easel too,

Some brushes and a box,

He puts his easel up and then

He tries to paint the rocks.”

Shettelworth sees influences of Homer, who was a friend, and Childe Hassam in Stevens’ paintings. He showed his work every year in Portland, the PMA paid tribute with an exhibition after his death. He also showed in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

Since his death, little serious attention has been paid to his paintings other than Shettleworth’s lecture in 1982. The UNE show raises the question: Could John Calvin Stevens become as accomplished a painter as he was an architect?

“It’s hard to judge,” Shettleworth said. He certainly had the potential, and had he applied himself to art as he did to architecture, who knows?

This show does not attempt to make that case, Shettleworth is quick to add. It’s simply an exhibition of work by a painter from Portland who was dedicated to his craft. That he happened to be a famous architect is part of the conversation. The work stands on its own regardless, he said.

UNE gallery director Anne Zill said people are curious about the show because they know Stevens as an architect. They’re interested to learn about this other part of his life. Visitors also recognize the locations where Stevens painted, despite the passage of time. “People who grew up in southern Maine and know some of the beaches he was painting, and Stroudwater and the Casco Bay islands are blown away by his ability to capture the feel of a place we know intimately,” she said.

Stevens was part of a great tradition of artists who went back to the same location time and again. Homer did it. Andrew Wyeth did it. Monhegan artists have been doing it going on 200 years.

It’s a great tradition in Maine art, Shettleworth said. Stevens fits right in, with landscapes filled as much by snow and fog as summer sun.

“Stevens worked in a very small, prescribed area. The fact that he went back to the same place time and time again, and yet found something different to paint, a new vantage point, a new subject, says a lot about who he was as an artist and his place in the world.”