A Circle of Friends: The Artists of the Florence Griswold House

Editor's note: The Florence Griswold Museum provided source material to Resource Library for the following article or essay. If you have questions or comments regarding the source material, please contact the Florence Griswold Museum directly through either this phone number or web address:

860-434-5542
http://www.flogris.org

A Circle of Friends: The Artists of the Florence Griswold House

March 31 - July 1, 2007

The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, presents a new exhibition entitled A Circle of Friends: The Artists of the Florence Griswold House, on view March 31 through July 1, 2007. The exhibition celebrates the artistic and personal bonds among the members of the Lyme Art Colony. Extensive research by new Museum curator, Amy Kurtz Lansing, illuminates this legendary group's communal identity in new and creative ways. Using seldom-seen works and newly-uncovered information, Kurtz Lansing vividly captures the flavor of Old Lyme in the early years of the 20th century, when the Griswold House was the center of a vibrant artist colony and impassioned painting sessions, rousing recreation, and creative exchanges were part of everyday life for its colorful boarders. This exhibition is sponsored by Kronholm Insurance Services and AXA Art Insurance Corporation.

The School of Lyme

The artists who congregated at the Griswold House were among the most successful and cosmopolitan painters of their day. Henry Ward Ranger, Childe Hassam, and Willard Metcalf were just a few of the artists who found Old Lyme to be the perfect site to paint and relax because of its abundance of scenery for subject material, the camaraderie of fellow artists, and the hospitality of "Miss Florence" Griswold. Exposure to each other's paintings in Old Lyme informed their subsequent works by motivating them to experiment with new color palettes and techniques. Grouping works by Walter Griffin, Willard Metcalf, and Childe Hassam helps explain the influences these artists had on one another. Griffin's hard-point pastel drawings, such as Old Lyme, Connecticut (1907), affirm his stylistic affinity with his friend, Childe Hassam. Already an accomplished artist and teacher, Griffin experienced a breakthrough in Old Lyme, where contact with Hassam and Willard Metcalf inspired him to look at the landscape with fresh eyes. "The drawings inspired by this artistic exchange were among the most acclaimed works of Griffin's career," remarks Kurtz Lansing. Working outdoors, Griffin composed nearly pointillist pastels characterized by mesmerizing, rhythmic lines. Perhaps inspired by Griffin, Metcalf undertook a series of plein air sketches in pastel, despite his stated dislike of the medium. Metcalf's Lyme Hillside (1906) demonstrates that the artist embraced pastels with great success.

Comrades of the Brush

During the course of their visits to Old Lyme, the artists' time was marked as much by fun and relaxation as by serious artistic pursuits. Among friends, they donned costumes, dined outdoors as the "Hot Air Club," and played drawing games. They were not above using their artistic skills for a bit of good-natured spoofing and self-mockery, as seen in the collaborative work by Childe Hassam, Walter Griffin, Henry Rankin Poore, and Will Howe Foote. The untitled painting reflects the inside jokes in which the artists engaged. With its odd combination of symbols (among them a hammer, an oafish figure, and a swarm of flies), this cryptic painted panel may also be a rebus, or word picture. Visitors are encouraged to help determine its meaning.

Despite the nearly constant ribbing, these "comrades of the brush" (in the words of one newspaper reporter of the era) were great admirers and supporters of one another's art. Several paintings in the exhibition are inscribed to fellow artists or their family members. Other works, like Cow Study (1902) by William Henry Howe, had once been in the collection of other artists, demonstrating that they frequently collected and exchanged pieces of art.

Not that the atmosphere was always convivial at the boardinghouse. A photo on display from around 1907 or 1908 shows that at one point, the profile of artist George Bogert was removed from The Fox Chase (1901-1905), the famed caricature of Colony members that Henry Rankin Poore painted below the mantel in the Griswold House. Although Bogert's face appears in the mural today, it was once scratched out by William Henry Howe, who was reportedly angry that Bogert had not paid Florence Griswold for room and board. Bogert's image was later restored by Poore. Harboring no ill will, Miss Florence hosted Bogert and his family at Old Lyme in both 1911 and 1914.

If These Walls Could Talk

Visitors to the exhibition are encouraged to tour the Griswold House to view The Fox Chase and other painted panels in the dining room, the center of the artists' social life. It was considered a sign of high praise to be invited by fellow artists to contribute a painting. The panels became a symbol of the colony's identity that was praised in the earliest journalists' coverage of Old Lyme.

The notoriety of these murals was not lost on their creators; Frank Vincent DuMond declared of a subsequent mural commission, "This is an unparalleled opportunity to make a lasting name and leave a monument behind me." His most prestigious mural commission was for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Large studies for those compositions hang in the exhibition. The Westward March of Civilization: Departure from the East (1915) and The Westward March of Civilization: Arrival in the West (1915) depict a young man's departure from the Eastern seaboard. Led by the allegorical figure of Fortune blowing her trumpet, the pioneers arrive in California, a brightly colored paradise. The group includes portraits of some of the architects, sculptors, and painters through whom culture would flourish in the West. "The links between DuMond's processional murals and The Fox Chase are intriguing and have not been explored until now," notes Kurtz Lansing.

Stretching the Bonds

Regardless of their aesthetic diversity, the artists of the Griswold House maintained their relationships over space and time. The friendships they cemented in Old Lyme also drew them together elsewhere-in Maine, Bermuda, and in New York, where most kept studios. Some artists, like Frank Bicknell, regarded Miss Florence and the members of the Lyme Art Colony as "the family." He and other Lyme artists sometimes fled Connecticut's late summer humidity to sketch and fish in Maine. One new acquisition, Bow Bridge, Old Lyme, Connecticut (ca. 1912), by Edmund Greacen, was painted by an artist drawn into the group from as far away as Giverny, in France. A Circle of Friends captures these bonds, the interconnectedness of the artists' lives and work, and the importance Old Lyme played in both.

On-Line Learning and Special Events

A Circle of Friends complements a new on-line learning initiative on the Museum's website that extends visitors' access to the paintings in the Florence Griswold House and the personalities behind them. Be the first to check out this new feature and learn about lectures, educational programs, and special events - visit http://www.flogris.org

Wall and label texts from the exhibition

A Circle of Friends: Artists of the Florence Griswold House

The legendary art colony centered at Florence Griswold's boardinghouse in Old Lyme sprang from a circle of friends. Delighted by the atmosphere of the Griswold home and the local scenery in Old Lyme, founder Henry Ward Ranger invited fellow artists in 1900 to join him there to develop a "tonal" school of American landscape painting. Working together in the fields and studios of Old Lyme, the artists established relationships that gave rise to impromptu costume parties, games, and collective art projects. Nowhere is this spirit of camaraderie more apparent than in the panels they painted for the Griswold House. As early as 1900, Ranger inaugurated the process with Bow Bridge, a moonlight scene he painted on a door in the hall. Beginning with Henry Rankin Poore's satirical The Fox Chase (1901- 05), below, which hangs below the fireplace mantel, the panels spread across the walls of the dining room, the center of the artists' social life. Painting panels for an audience of talented friends to be displayed in this special spot both challenged and liberated colony members. The iconic status the panels attained almost immediately meant that the artists were thought of as unified in their approach to landscape painting. But the visual conversation between their paintings inside and outside the Griswold House reveals that although the artists found inspiration in each other's works, they also experimented by choosing unexpected themes or approaches.

The works in these two galleries explore the personal and artistic bonds among the Lyme Art Colony members who decorated the Griswold House. As the paintings around you reveal, some of the artists shared a passion for travel, animal subjects, or murals like those they had created at Miss Florence's. Others, like Walter Griffin, Childe Hassam, and Willard Metcalf, borrowed from each other to refine their Impressionist approaches to landscape painting. Each artist's unique style and technique found acceptance in the freewheeling atmosphere of Old Lyme. Regardless of their aesthetic diversity, the artists of the Griswold House maintained their relationships over space and time -- an elasticity that allowed the circle to incorporate other sympathetic artists. Whether they painted cow pastures or Venetian lagoons, colony members found common ground not only in their high-spirited frolics, but in their reverence for the landscape. When you have seen this exhibition, be sure to visit the Griswold House to see the dining room where these artistic dialogues, born of friendship, began.

The Fox Chase, Griswold House painted panels, and the personalities behind them can be explored in-depth through a new on-line learning initiative. Visit www.FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org/Learning.

"The School of Lyme"

Henry Rankin Poore painted The Fox Chase (190105), a frieze just below the mantelpiece in the Griswold House dining room, to celebrate the core group of artists who congregated at Miss Florence's boardinghouse at Old Lyme. At the lower right corner of the composition, Poore playfully dubbed the painters, who abandon their easels to run after the fox, as "The School of Lyme." Flanked on one side by a full bottle of mastic varnish-colony founder Henry Ward Ranger's ingredient for conjuring up rich, glowing, tonal landscapes-and on the other side by a nearly empty bottle of rye whiskey, the label is clearly tongue-in-cheek. Although dominated in its early years by "Tonalist" painters like Ranger who used tinted glazes to evoke intimate moods, Old Lyme also played host to Impressionists like Childe Hassam, who arrived in 1903. The works by Allen B. Talcott, Ranger, Walter Griffin, Willard Metcalf, and Frank Vincent DuMond in this section of the exhibition demonstrate that these artists enjoyed a creative dialogue both during the intensive periods they spent together in the colony's heyday and over the decades that followed. Exposure to each other's paintings in Old Lyme informed their subsequent works by motivating them to experiment with new color palettes and techniques. While no one coherent style truly describes "The School of Lyme," the label is apt in another sense because it acknowledges the process of artistic growth nurtured by the Old Lyme painters through their interactions with one another.

Allen B. Talcott (1867-1908)

Sunset Over the Marsh, 1890s

Oil on canvas

Gift of the Morris Collection

1993.15

The marshland over which Talcott's glorious sun sets may be in France, where he studied in the 1890s, or in his native Connecticut. This landscape's luminosity echoes the glowing quality found in works by fellow Tonalist painter Henry Ward Ranger, whom Talcott joined in Old Lyme in 1901. Comparison of this canvas with May Moon, the other Talcott painting in this gallery, reveals how quickly the artist would open himself to a light-infused plein air approach and textured brushwork once in Old Lyme. As his friends observed in his obituary after his death at only forty-one, his poetic sensibilities were not limited to capturing solitude in canvases like Sunset Over the Marsh, but also included reciting Robert Browning or Rudyard Kipling while painting outdoors.

Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916)

Mason's Island, 1905

Oil on canvas

Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company

2002.1.113

With its mix of pastoral settlement and sheltering forests, Mason's Island, off the coast of Noank, Connecticut, represented Ranger's ideal landscape. After 1903, when the influx of large numbers of art students made Old Lyme a less hospitable place, Ranger moved to nearby Noank, but maintained ties with fellow artists at Old Lyme. In Mason's Island, his characteristic golden tones and glazes have been enlivened with touches of blue. Despite his reputation for strictly employing Old Master techniques, Ranger did adapt his palette as a response to the brighter tones of the Impressionists he encountered in Old Lyme.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935)

Isles of Shoals, 1906

Oil on canvas

Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company

2002.1.67

Hassam spent much of 1906 in Old Lyme, but likely completed this azure seascape in the Isles of Shoals between late July and late August of that year. Ten miles off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the Isles of Shoals attracted artists like Hassam, who first visited his friend, the poet and journalist Celia Thaxter, there in 1886. Thaxter's engaging personality and informal salons lured musicians, artists, and writers to her island home. After Thaxter died in 1894, Hassam may have felt that he had found another muse in Florence Griswold, whose kind attentions and house full of artists he enjoyed at the Old Lyme Art Colony beginning in 1903. Already a renowned Impressionist, his impact on the Griswold House circle was immediate.

Walter Griffin (1861-1935)

Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1907

Pastel on cardboard

Purchase

2001.50

Griffin's hard-point pastels affirm his stylistic affinity with his close friend, Childe Hassam. Already an accomplished artist and teacher, Griffin experienced a breakthrough at Old Lyme, where contact with Hassam and Willard Metcalf, whom he had met in New York, inspired him to look at the landscape with fresh eyes. Working outdoors, Griffin composed nearly pointillist pastels characterized by mesmerizing, rhythmic lines. When he exhibited these studies in 1908, one critic remarked: "The artist seems to feel his way at the point of the crayon here, there, and yonder over the paper until out of these hundreds of lightly traced, suggestive lines comes something of the brilliant, confused, vibrating charm of nature in sunlight." Although a finished work in its own right, this pastel also served as the basis for a larger painting.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935)

Ten Pound Island, ca. 189699

Oil on canvas

Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company

2002.1.68

Loose flecks of sun-infused color like those in Hassam's view of Ten Pound Island, off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts, became his signature as an Impressionist. Nearly a decade after he completed Ten Pound Island, Hassam's gestural approach still inspired fellow artist Walter Griffin, whose pastel By the River, hangs nearby. Although Hassam coordinated trips to Gloucester in 1895 and 1899 to coincide with those of Willard Metcalf, the bustling seaport lacked a single social center for artists like that which later made Old Lyme so appealing.

Walter Griffin (1861-1935)

By the River, 1907

Pastel and pencil on paper

Purchase

2005.1

More loosely executed than Griffin's pastel Old Lyme, Connecticut, which hangs nearby, this landscape drawing of cows grazing around a tree conveys the freedom with which the artist sketched in the Lyme countryside alongside companions like Willard Metcalf and Childe Hassam. Griffin's openness to Hassam's emphatic Impressionism is evident both in this pastel and in Landscape with Cow, a wall panel jointly painted, also in 1907, by Griffin, Hassam, and Henry Rankin Poore. The panel can be seen in the dining room of the Florence Griswold House.

Willard Metcalf (1858-1925)

Lyme Hillside, 1906

Pastel on paper

Gift of the Artist

X1972.220

Inspired perhaps by Walter Griffin, whom he called "a thoroughly congenial soul," Metcalf undertook a series of plein air studies in pastel in 1906. By building up layers of color on a dark paper, he fashions a sun-struck landscape from electric strokes of yellow, orange, green, and blue, structured by deft touches of black. Despite his stated dislike of the medium, Metcalf embraced pastels with great success, a testament to the fruitful creative exchanges shared by the Old Lyme artists. Likewise, the ensemble of three panels he painted for the Griswold House dining room -- a seascape, a wooded landscape, and a still life -- showcased his versatility for the artists who ate and socialized in their presence.

Walter Griffin (1861-1935)

Asparagus Bed and Twin Poplars, 1911

Oil on canvas

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. George Hollenberg

1994.20

The same versatility and willingness to embrace new techniques that transformed Griffin artistically in Old Lyme are evident in this landscape, painted in France. Not content to settle into a static form of Impressionism, Griffin forged a bold and unique approach, characterized by earthy tones and the thick application of paint. Ribbons of color applied directly on the canvas with a palette knife replace the kind of divided strokes of pigment seen in paintings like Hassam's Ten Pound Island, also in the exhibition. Beginning in 1908, Griffin spent several years in Europe, where he traveled with fellow artist William Singer, Jr., a friend from the Lyme Art Colony.

Allen B. Talcott (1867-1908)

May Moon, 1902

Oil on canvas

Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company

2002.1.136

Talcott's first "delightful summer" in Old Lyme, as he told Miss Florence, left him with one hundred thirty sketches upon which he declared, "he could work for years." Completed in his second season at Old Lyme, May Moon demonstrates Talcott's quick absorption of the more delicate tints characteristic of Impressionism. Whispers of pink, blue, red, and green pervade the landscape, in which winter is turning to spring. As in Talcott's more Tonalist Sunset Over the Marsh (also in this gallery), this painting attests to the artist's keen sensitivity to seasonal color and light conditions. An avid plein air painter, Talcott executed countless studies outdoors, but only developed a few into large-scale canvases like this one before his early death in 1908.

Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1961)

Grassy Hill, 1933

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mrs. Elisabeth DuMond Perry

1974.9

Grassy Hill depicts the area in Lyme where DuMond bought a house in 1906. Artist Allen B. Talcott had first introduced him to the crowd at Florence Griswold's house, but it was the close friendship DuMond formed there with Willard Metcalf that had the most profound impact on his work. The autumnal radiance and tightly controlled strokes in Grassy Hill echo Metcalf's artistic experiments in the earlier pastel Lyme Hillside, which hangs nearby.

Assisted by Will Howe Foote, DuMond came to town in 1902 as the Director of the Lyme Summer School of Art sponsored by the Art Students League of New York. Completed over three decades after his arrival, Grassy Hill affirms the Impressionist artistic legacy of the colony, which DuMond helped perpetuate through his teaching at the "School of Lyme."

Comrades of the Brush

Although enamored of the quiet pleasures of rural life and the intimate society of the Griswold House, the artists who congregated at Old Lyme were among the most successful and cosmopolitan painters of their day. Many, like Frank Bicknell, George H. Bogert, Edward Rook, and Clark Voorhees, had lived and studied in Europe or traveled to faraway locales, such as Japan or Mexico, in search of subject matter. They were members of exclusive New York gentlemen's clubs such as the Lotos and the Salmagundi, where they often displayed their work. The friendships they cemented in Old Lyme also drew them together elsewhere-in Maine, Bermuda, and in New York, where most kept studios. In their choices of subjects for panels in the Griswold dining room, several artists proclaimed themselves well-traveled and sophisticated by depicting Spain, Venice, the Far East, or the Canadian wilderness.

Yet while close-knit socially, colony members maintained artistic independence. They contributed a diverse range of paintings, like the ones on view in this section, to the annual summer exhibitions they organized at the library in Old Lyme beginning in 1902. The artists celebrated fellow "comrades of the brush" (in the words of one newspaper reporter of the era) by selecting them to decorate panels in Miss Florence's dining room. Frank Bicknell, Arthur Heming, and Charles Vezin were among those who received that honor, while others were immortalized by caricatures in Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase (1901-05). Although many artists stayed in or socialized at the Griswold House, only a handful of the closest friends present in the colony's early years appear in Poore's humorous composition. Of the artists represented in this section of the exhibition, Bicknell, Bogert, Heming, Rook, and Voorhees all pursue Poore's fox across the dining room.

George H. Bogert (1864-1944)

Venice in the Mist

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Harris

1984.14

An inveterate traveler, Bogert is best known for his diaphanous depictions of Venice veiled in mist and other atmospheric European scenes. Critics praised his works for their poetic feeling, created by dissolving the edges of forms like the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, glimpsed across the lagoon. Closer to home, Bogert exhibited a painting of Chester, Connecticut, at the Society of American Artists in 1890, and eventually came to Lyme at the suggestion of fellow "Tonalist" Henry Ward Ranger.

Although Bogert's face appears in The Fox Chase mural today, it was once scratched out by the artist William Henry Howe, who was reportedly angry that Bogert had not paid Florence Griswold's bill for room and board. A photograph of Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase from around 1907 or 1908, which appears in the case nearby, shows the painting without Bogert's profile, before it was restored by Poore. Harboring no ill will, Miss Florence hosted Bogert and his family at Old Lyme in both 1911 and 1914.

Charles Vezin (1858-1942)

New York Harbor, ca. 191820

Oil on canvas

Collection of Jonathan D. Carlisle

New York Harbor presents the city as seen from the artist's studio in Brooklyn. Combining sumptuous atmosphere with contemporary urban subject matter, Vezin softens New York's modern contours with swaths of violet haze. A businessman who only retired in 1919, Vezin painted with fervent devotion. His membership in the Art Students League, where he studied with Frank Vincent DuMond, and in the Salmagundi Club, likely brought him into the circle of Old Lyme. As early as 1904, Vezin visited artist Allen B. Talcott in Old Lyme, and began exhibiting with members of the colony the following year. Although conscious of the outsider status created by the fact that he did not make his living by painting, Vezin forged friendships and shared a devotion to art that were his entrée to the group. As he wrote about the colony to the new owner of one of his paintings in 1909, "the artists have paid me the compliment of always including me in the invitations to exhibit." Vezin's panel in the Griswold House dining room shares this painting's New York theme.

Clark Voorhees (1871-1933)

Landscape by Moonlight, Bermuda, after 1919

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James B. Murphy III

1988.9

After 1919, Voorhees and his family spent winters in Bermuda at their whitewashed cottage, named "Tranquility," which is glimpsed across the field in this painting. Voorhees excelled at fusing moonlight's glow with evening's dense blue tones, and produced multiple nocturnes. The composition's low horizon line and towering cedar trees reflect the artist's exposure to French Barbizon landscapes and to the flat terrain of Holland, which he had visited in the 1890s.

Despite his extensive travels, Voorhees felt most at home in Old Lyme, where he summered for decades after he first toured the area with his bicycle in 1896. It was he who persuaded Henry Ward Ranger to visit Old Lyme and to stay with Florence Griswold. Old Lyme artists followed Voorhees's example again in later years by journeying to Bermuda, where they could sketch outdoors all winter.

Frank A. Bicknell (1866-1943)

Ogunquit, Maine

Oil on artist's board

Gift of Mr. Charles Tyler

1973.18

Bicknell's small painting renders the sun-drenched coast of Maine with startling freshness. Working on the spot with a palette knife, the artist applied paint directly to the board to construct the rock's craggy surface. He used the color of the bare support itself to suggest the cliff's sharp crevices.

Bicknell, who never married and was likely gay, regarded Miss Florence and the members of the Lyme Art Colony as "the family." He and other Lyme artists sometimes fled Connecticut's late summer humidity to sketch and fish in Maine. In addition to painting in Ogunquit, a small fishing village on Maine's south coast, Bicknell spent time with Lyme artists Walter Griffin, Arthur Heming, and Charles Ebert at Monhegan Island. Bicknell maintained a life-long connection to Lyme through the home left to him as a bequest by the artist Lewis Cohen, a fellow Griswold House boarder.

Edward F. Rook (1870-1960)

The Red Serape, ca. 1901

Oil on canvas

Purchase

1993.10

Rook found the subject for The Red Serape during an eleven-month stay in Mexico. The greenish tone and sharp notes of red and magenta characterize his highly individual approach to color. Rook's sallow tonalities evoke the stiff heat of an arid day, during which the artist and his sitters take refuge in the shade cast by the building or their sombreros. When exhibited alongside paintings by other Lyme artists, Rook's Mexican scenes stand out against the grays and grassy northern greens of canvases by artists like George Bogert or Carleton Wiggins, which hang nearby.

Rook painted slowly and meticulously on large canvases, a trait spoofed in The Fox Chase mural, where he grapples with a painting rather than join his fellow artists in the hunt. Unable or unwilling to adapt his technique to the wooden panels in the dining room, Rook chose instead to paint a picture of one of his favorite local subjects, Bradbury's Mill, which he inscribed as a gift to Miss Florence. The canvas now hangs over the fireplace in her parlor.

Arthur Heming (1870-1940)

Aurora Borealis, 1906

Oil on canvas board

Gift of Helen D. Perkins

1970.1

Heming's nearly monochromatic depiction of a wolf and dogsled teams dwarfed by the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, stands out among the works of fellow members of the Lyme Art Colony. Like this painting, his contribution to the Griswold House dining room is also a blend of gray, white, and black. Although it is often said that Heming painted with such a limited palette because he erroneously believed he was color blind, the muted grays, pinks, and yellows permeating the whites in Aurora Borealis could also reflect the common artistic practice of working in scaled-back colors when preparing images to be reproduced as illustrations. Heming wrote and illustrated articles and books based on his treks in the wilderness of his native Canada. By setting color aside, Heming could focus on simple forms and sculptural contours that would suggest the dramatic frozen landscape of Canada's Hudson Bay region.

The Grass Menagerie

From the beginning, Old Lyme's bucolic environment attracted many animal painters. William Henry Howe, Henry Rankin Poore, Matilda Browne, and Carleton Wiggins arrived shortly after Henry Ward Ranger began to promote the area as an ideal spot for an American school of landscape painting similar to those associated with Barbizon, in France, and Laren, in Holland. In fact, livestock painters at Old Lyme were among those most devoted to the Old Master techniques and Tonalist palette Ranger championed. Browne, Howe, Poore, Ranger, and Wiggins had all trained in France or Holland, where they were introduced to the European tradition of animal painting. Although avid students of the local landscape who sketched outdoors, Old Lyme's animal painters ultimately favored more polished canvases, which they completed in the studio, rather than the textured brushwork and quickly executed studies undertaken by their Impressionist colleagues. The prominence of animals in landscapes by some of the Griswold House artists gave those painters a separate identity within the larger Old Lyme Art Colony, and led to its own brand of humor. One newspaper article joked that, "the horses, cows, and oxen, particularly the oxen, have learned to pose and will stand motionless for hours when they see an artist in their neighborhood." Even Henry Rankin Poore's legendary The Fox Chase (1901-05), on view in Florence Griswold's dining room, pokes fun at this major strand of the colony's output -- Poore not only likens his fellow artists to a pack of hounds racing after their prey, but depicts Howe and Wiggins, both painters of cows and sheep, quietly observing the mayhem with bovine complacency.

William Henry Howe (1846-1929)

Gray Day, Holland, 1891

Oil on canvas

Museum purchase with funds from the Charles E. Culpepper Foundation

1995.2

During more than a decade of study in France and Holland, where this painting was executed, Howe became a leading animal painter-a distinction retained in America. Positioned against a backdrop of windmills, this herd of cows subtly alters our perception of the flat Dutch landscape in which they graze. Their earthy, muscular forms temper the vast expanse of gray sky, bringing the viewer's perspective down to a more intimate, human scale. The artist's quiet, closely observed, and softly finished depictions of cows impart a sense of calm not unlike that which Howe himself contributed to the festive atmosphere of Old Lyme. At Florence Griswold's house, Howe played the role of the benign "Uncle," as the younger artists called him; the colony's elder statesman, he was granted the honor of carving roasts at the dinner table as a playful nod to his knowledge of bovine anatomy.

Carleton Wiggins (1848-1932)

Seaside Sheep Pasture, after 1906

Oil on canvas

Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company

2002.1.167

Wiggins, a disciple of the painter George Inness, plays the fresh, springtime green of the pasture off against the creamy fleece of the sheep. Wiggins came to Old Lyme in 1904, bringing with him not only the luscious Barbizon-inspired color and soft texture seen in this painting, but also his son, the artist Guy C. Wiggins. An accomplished animal painter, the senior Wiggins excelled at depicting flocks of sheep, which were a common sight in Europe, where he trained, and became more popular in New England as the animals proved suitable for the tired, rocky soil and cold weather. Wiggins and his son often sketched around Lyme, and the elder man liked the area so much that he bought a summer home here for his family. Although Wiggins only occasionally roomed with Miss Florence, he was invited to paint a panel in the dining room and was included among those caricatured in The Fox Chase. With his pipe in his mouth, Wiggins watches the mad scramble with the serenity of his grazing sheep.

Gifford Beal (1879-1956)

Spring, 1916

Watercolor on paper

Gift of Miss Martha Anderson

X1972.213

Although characterized by washes of color more than stippled brushwork, this watercolor, with its vibrant blues, suggests the lasting impact on Beal's work of Childe Hassam. The versatile Beal, who became known for the range of subjects dealt with in his fluidly painted works, got to know Hassam during the seasons the younger Beal spent in Lyme in 1903 and 1904. In contrast to this fresh sketch, the Lieutenant River landscape that Beal painted across two door panels in Florence Griswold's house instead exemplifies the moodier grays often associated with works by the Tonalist founder of the colony, Henry Ward Ranger. Although in time he set aside the Tonalist palette, here Beal revisits the subject of cows grazing by a stream, a favorite subject among the animal painters at Old Lyme.

Matilda Browne (1869-1947)

Spring Plowing, ca. 1905

Oil on canvas

Collection of Peter and Harriet Aaronson

Painted along the Connecticut River, Spring Plowing testifies to Browne's sensitivity to the animal form. She began painting as a child prodigy, and eventually took lessons with Carleton Wiggins, whose depiction of grazing sheep hangs nearby. Spring Plowing exhibits more textured brushwork and lighter colors than those found in her earlier compositions, such as the painting of cows she added to one of the doors in Florence Griswold's house; Browne was the only woman artist selected for this honor. Her professional training in France and Holland -- a background she shared with Lyme artist William Henry Howe -- and the critical praise her paintings received facilitated her acceptance by the male members of the colony. Undoubtedly, her focus on animal subjects, a sub-genre considered more appropriate for women than pure landscape, shielded her from the complaints leveled at other female artists who attempted to join the colony. Although she worked and exhibited alongside the Lyme Art Colony's male artists, Browne often rented separate quarters with her mother and sister away from the raucous atmosphere of Miss Florence's boardinghouse. Browne's fond relationship with the colony members was eventually commemorated by the addition of her portrait to Henry Rankin Poore's Fox Chase mural sometime around 1920.

Henry Rankin Poore (1859-1940)

Hounds Panel, ca. 1934

Oil on wood

Purchase

1998.11.2a

This panel depicting hounds chasing a rabbit is one of two painted to adorn the automobile owned by Old Lyme grocer Woodward Griswold. While studying art in England, Poore fell in love with the sport of hunting with dogs. For the rest of his life, he painted hounds and hunts, many of them during the summers he spent in Old Lyme beginning in 1900. His passion for the sport inspired him to compose The Fox Chase (190105), the humorous portrait of members of the Lyme Art Colony racing across the landscape after their elusive prey. Poore's sense of humor crops up again in his choice of a hunt scene for the side of Griswold's car. In contrast to the hunter, Poore once wrote, "the automobilist may show greater speed, but they travel every man's road, making no way of their own, and their locomotion is endowed with neither variety nor hazard."

William Henry Howe (1846-1929)

Cow Study, 1902

Graphite and black chalk on paper

Gift of Gifford Beal, Jr., and William Beal

1994.19.1

Howe's interest in bovines was so consistent that his paintings were dubbed "Howe's cows." However, as this working study completed in Lyme demonstrates, the artist began each composition anew with sketches of animal anatomy done in the field. Howe was not alone in his quest for models; in a newspaper article, Lillian Baynes Griffin (the wife of Lyme Art Colony painter Walter Griffin) joked that, "Lyme cows are so busy posing for the art classes that they have hardly time to be milked." Howe, who lived at an art colony in Bronxville, New York, traveled to Lyme each summer in search of the herds of cows no longer visible around his suburban home.

William McKillop

Photograph of The Fox Chase in Florence Griswold's Dining Room, ca. 1907-08

Photograph mounted on cardboard

Lyme Historical Society Archives

This photograph shows Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase (190105) not long after the painting had been added to the mantel in Florence Griswold's dining room. Just above it are the English hunt prints by E.C. Turner that may have inspired the composition. Below The Fox Chase is the imaginary coat of arms of the "Knockers' Club." The elements of the crest, including a cow's head for William Henry Howe, are visual puns on the names of the artists who playfully "knocked," or roasted, their absent companions over meals in the dining room.

"The Freedom of Being at Home"

After a visit to Miss Florence, the artist Allen B. Talcott wrote, "your delightful hospitality has all the charm of being a guest with the freedom of being at home." The artists of the Griswold House regarded the congenial atmosphere to which Talcott referred as sacred. Not only did they revere their hostess at the "Holy House," they also prized the liberty they enjoyed there from the demands of students and patrons. Among friends, they donned costumes, dined outdoors as the "Hot Air Club," played drawing games, teased one another, and of course, painted with abandon. To protect this treasured camaraderie, Miss Florence permitted the artists of the Griswold House to veto potential tenants, an informal policy well known to those disappointed visitors who aspired to live among the painters who had "arrived."

Surrounded by friends who knew each other through the Art Students League or clubs in New York, the Griswold House artists claimed the run of the place, filling every nook and cranny, indoors and out, with their bedrooms and studios. They painted depictions of the house, its inhabitants, and the Old Lyme landscape, like those in this section of the exhibition, both for private exchange with fellow artists or local friends, and for public view. But by decorating the boardinghouse's doors and dining room walls, the colony artists left their mark, establishing a proudly guarded group identity intimately tied to the house. The collaborative projects begun as games and contests eventually flowered into the artists' ultimate collective endeavor-the founding of the Lyme Art Association in 1914.

Everett L. Warner (1877-1963)

Studios Behind the Florence Griswold House, ca. 1912

Oil on canvas

Florence Griswold Museum

1971.9

Painted from a rear room of the boardinghouse on a chilly winter morning, Warner's canvas depicts the outbuildings converted into studios by Florence Griswold in order to accommodate visiting artists. Workspace in these barns and shacks ranging down toward the Lieutenant River rented for five dollars a month.

Warner first came to Old Lyme in 1909, probably through the influence of his close friend, Harry Hoffman. Although Warner enjoyed the boardinghouse's sociable atmosphere, he also sought periods of solitude in which he could devote himself fully to painting. After spending a quiet winter at her house, Warner became close friends with Miss Florence. In March 1911, she organized an exhibition of his works at the Wadsworth Atheneum's Annex that included numerous snow-covered landscapes. Perhaps in honor of the fruitful winter months enjoyed in her company, Warner contributed a snow scene to the decorations in the Griswold House dining room.

William Chadwick (18791962)

Front Parlor, Florence Griswold House, ca. 1905-08

Oil on canvas

Gift of Elizabeth Chadwick O'Connell

1975.7.2

Bathed in soft northern light, Florence Griswold contemplates a book during a quiet moment in her parlor. Chadwick's gentle treatment of the art colony's patron saint reflects the fond appreciation he and other painters felt toward Miss Florence. Rather than depict the perpetual clutter and careworn furniture for which her house was known, Chadwick presents his sitter as a cultured lady perched on a rococo revival sofa. Although he embraced Impressionist landscape painting during his time at Old Lyme, he was best known for portraits and figure subjects when he arrived at the colony in 1902. Few painters made themselves more at home at the boardinghouse than Chadwick, who summered at Old Lyme with his New York studiomates (and fellow Art Students League members) Will Howe Foote and Harry Hoffman.

Harry Hoffman (1874-1966)

Childe Hassam's Studio, 1909

Oil on canvas

Gift of the Artist

1955.1

Cascading spring blossoms beautify the ramshackle studio on the bank of the Lieutenant River in which Childe Hassam painted during his visits to Old Lyme. Studios were both places for hard work and sites of fun and mischief. Hassam liberated a comfortable sofa from artist Henry Rankin Poore's studio in order to enhance his own, only to have it stolen back again. Hoffman may have chosen to depict Hassam's studio for its particular fame; not only was it associated with the much-admired Impressionist, whose staccato brushwork is evoked in the flowering tree, but the building even had a name, "Bonero Terrace." Hassam based the nickname on fellow artist Will Howe Foote's mispronunciation of "Borneo" after seeing the "Wild Man of Borneo" in a traveling circus.

Although artists stored paintings in their studios when they were absent, other artists frequently used the spaces. The shack in Hoffman's painting was occupied at various times by Louis Paul Dessar, Matilda Browne, and Allen B. Talcott.

Will Howe Foote (1874-1965)

Blacksmith Shop, Old Lyme, ca. 1910

Oil on canvas board

Gift of Mr. Freeman Foote

1980.12

Foote's quick study depicts the blacksmith shop once located on Lyme Street. Its colorful walls are covered with circus posters, including one of a crouching lion. Foote first heard about Old Lyme from the artist Clark Voorhees when the two were students in Europe, and came to the area in 1901 on the heels of his uncle, the cattle painter William Henry Howe. The next year, Foote assisted Frank Vincent DuMond in teaching the summer school organized at Lyme by the Art Students League. Foote lived and worked at Florence Griswold's boardinghouse, and there met and married an art student, Helen Freeman-one of several romances that blossomed under her roof. The visual energy of Foote's brushwork in this painting suggests the artist's youth and vigor-traits acknowledged by Henry Rankin Poore, who painted Foote at the front of the pack of artists in The Fox Chase.

Henry C. White (1861-1952)

Untitled Landscape, ca. 1910

Pastel on paper

Gift of Mr. Freeman Foote

1992.3.3

White's pastel of a dry winter landscape is inscribed to Helen Freeman Foote, the wife of artist Will Howe Foote. She originally came to Old Lyme to study art with Henry Rankin Poore, so this drawing would undoubtedly have reminded her of her own sketching en plein air, as well as commemorating one of the many friendships formed in the boardinghouse's congenial atmosphere. As admirers and supporters of one another's work, the inhabitants of the Griswold House frequently collected and exchanged pieces by fellow colony artists. Although White lived nearby in Waterford, he and his family spent summers and falls at Old Lyme between 1903 and 1907, and maintained close ties to the colony in subsequent years. White, the first of the artists to own a car, appears behind the wheel in Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase (1901-05).

Lewis Cohen (1857-1915)

Huntington Oaks, ca. 1915

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. Grafton Wiggins

1975.2

Cohen's sumptuous rendering of trees along the Lieutenant River bears a dedication to his friend, Joseph Huntington. Huntington, a judge and prominent local figure, lived next door to the Griswold House. Cohen's affection for summers spent at Miss Florence's in sight of the Huntington oaks is evident both in this canvas and in one of his letters to her: "These are the times when my thoughts naturally wander to your trees and shady nooks, and the hot-air club." A well-off, cosmopolitan artist who traveled frequently to Europe, Cohen nevertheless felt utterly at home in Old Lyme, to which he had been introduced by fellow Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger. Cohen eventually bought a house just up the street from Huntington and Miss Florence. The generosity of spirit that prompted him to bestow this painting upon a friend also inspired Cohen to collude with Arthur Heming and Harry Hoffman to spruce up the Griswold House in its mistress's absence. Ever magnanimous, he even left an interest in his Old Lyme home to artist Frank Bicknell as a bequest.

Gregory Smith (1880-1961)

Smith's Neck

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. George Lester in memory of Sophie Barney Lester

1971.4

Smith's depiction of the storm-swept sky over the marshy peninsula where the Black Hall and Duck Rivers meet at Long Island Sound is a tour-de-force of color and expressive brushwork. Invited by his friend Will Howe Foote, Smith arrived in Old Lyme from Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1910. Having admired the by-then-famous Lyme Art Colony from afar, he was particularly eager to learn from the works of Willard Metcalf, whose nocturnes and command of atmosphere Smith emulated. In addition to the purples and mauves applied in bold, swirling strokes in Smith's Neck, the artist adds tinges of greenish yellow and white, which impart an eerie quality to the sun breaking through the clouds. The effect is not unlike that of the snowy night scene he painted near Metcalf's panels in the Griswold House dining room.

Harry Hoffman (1874-1966)

Harvest Moon Walk, ca. 1912

Oil on canvas

Anonymous Gift

X1972.214

Hoffman's eccentric depiction of strangely clad figures captures one of the Lyme Art Colony's most festive rituals. On an October evening, merrymakers arrived at Florence Griswold's house imaginatively costumed as fruits and vegetables. The marchers, a mix of artists and townspeople, formed a motley procession. They lit Japanese lanterns and paraded through Old Lyme, accompanied by a band. Once they reached the top of Chadwick Hill, bonfires were ignited and the revelers danced and picnicked by the light of the harvest moon. Although it is not known precisely which year's procession Hoffman pictures in Harvest Moon Walk, a 1916 newspaper describes the costumes of several past and present residents of the boardinghouse: Miss Florence Griswold, string bean; H.R. Poore, "dead beet;" Clark Voorhees, lettuce; Mrs. Voorhees and Mrs. DuMond, aster; Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hoffman, Dutch tulips.

Taking stock of these frequent diversions, which also included foot races and picnics, Lillian Baynes Griffin, the wife of artist Walter Griffin, announced to the readers of a newspaper article about the colony, "Art is Forgot at Lyme."

Willard Metcalf (1858-1925)

Summer at Hadlyme, 1914

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mrs. Henriette Metcalf

1980.8

In addition to partaking in the convivial atmosphere created by the inhabitants of the Florence Griswold House, artists like Metcalf also settled with their families on the peaceful country lanes in and around Old Lyme. Here, Henriette, the artist's second wife, and his daughter, Rosalind, enjoy a quiet afternoon in the rented cottage at the corner of Seldon and Joshuatown Roads in Hadlyme, where they spent the summer of 1914. During Metcalf's previous sojourn in Lyme seven years earlier, his first wife, Marguerite, and Robert H. Nisbet, one of the artists who painted panels in the Griswold House dining room, ran away together. With its tender mood, Summer at Hadlyme hearkens back to an earlier time, not only by capturing Metcalf's renewed familial bliss, but by recalling the figurative compositions for which he was also known before immersing himself in the study of the Lyme landscape.

Louis Paul Dessar (1867-1952)

Landscape, 1906

Oil on canvas

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph F. Besier

This intimate moonlit landscape conjures Dessar's contemplative, private side. The artist thought of twilight as the perfect time to stroll through the country and imbibe nature's charms. As he observed, "It is like another world to me -- a world of dreams." Dessar's pleasurable years in the art colony at Giverny, France, encouraged him to become one of the first to join Henry Ward Ranger at Florence Griswold's boardinghouse in 1900. The next year, Dessar purchased a 600-acre farm on Becket Hill where he raised sheep and oxen as subjects for his paintings. The artist occasionally entertained visitors, such as fellow colony member Jules Turcas, but otherwise, as this painting suggests, enjoyed the rural solitude.

Clark Voorhees (1871-1933)

The Bacon House, Old Lyme, 1896

Pen and ink

Gift of Mrs. Wells Barney

1981.2

In the spring of 1896, Voorhees became the first artist later associated with the colony to visit Old Lyme. This pen and ink sketch depicts the Bacon House, where he stayed in the spring and fall of that year. Voorhees fell in love with the Lyme countryside and quickly selected the Griswold House, which was still a girls' school, as summer lodgings for his mother and sister. Although he slept at the Bacon House, Voorhees's social life already centered on Florence Griswold's, where he sketched, took meals, attended a dance, and made friends. He gave this sketch to one such acquaintance, Miss Griffin, as a wedding present in October 1896. Voorhees's blissful experiences in Old Lyme that year and in 1898 led him to recommend that Henry Ward Ranger establish himself at Miss Florence's boardinghouse.

Attributed to Lydia Longacre (1870-1951)

Dining Room of the Florence Griswold House, ca. 1905

Oil on academy board

Gift of the Reverend Marion (Pete) Longacre McCart

1997.13

This informal study provides our only glimpse of artists relaxing in the Griswold House dining room. The man on the right is likely Childe Hassam, who visited Old Lyme in the chilly months of October 1904, April and October 1905. At the end of a day of painting outdoors, artists gathered in the dining room for supper and afterwards talked by the fire. Through their conversations, they developed the friendships and jokes that made their way into the humorous portrayals of the artists in Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase (1901-05), which can be seen above the hearth. As the bare wall behind the figure on the left indicates, the artists had not yet begun their project of adorning the dining room walls with painted panels. In the years following 1905, paintings by Robert H. Nisbet, Charles Vezin, Gustave Wiegand, and Charles Morris Young would decorate that corner of the room. Lydia Longacre, to whom this painting is attributed, visited Florence Griswold's home in October 1904 and during the spring sketching season of 1905, when she most likely encountered Childe Hassam.

Margaret Hardon Wright (1869-1936)

Dining Room in the Florence Griswold House, probably October 25, 1910

Graphite and colored pencil on paper

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. James H. Wright

1982.141.26

The Florence Griswold House, October 27, 1910

Graphite and colored pencil on paper

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. James H. Wright

1982.141.21

Wright had studied architecture and her drawings of Florence Griswold's house, annotated with the place and date, skillfully delineate its historic façade and interior. When compared to the painting attributed to Lydia Longacre, which depicts the dining room around 1905 (elsewhere in the exhibition), the progress of the decorative program is evident: painted panels by Robert H. Nisbet, Charles Vezin, and Childe Hassam now adorn the door and walls to the left in Wright's sketch.

By 1910, the Griswold House and its dining room had attained iconic status through articles in newspapers and magazines. Although not a member of the colony, Wright and her husband owned a house in Haddam, Connecticut, and may have sketched the famed Griswold House during a visit there to see her friend Henry Rankin Poore.

Florence Griswold (1850-1937)

Moonlight, 1905

Gouache on paper

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Legassie

1982.130

Florence Griswold pardons her efforts at painting on this postcard to Helen Clark, by declaring, "Of course, I am not an expert," then playfully asks for a colorful scene in return. In the atmosphere she fostered among the artists who boarded at her house, Miss Florence nurtured all varieties of talent, and occasionally even took up the brush herself.

Henry C. White (1861-1952)

Album of photographs, 1904

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. George C. White

The "inmates" of the Florence Griswold House pictured here include Walter Griffin-who has tossed his informal painting cap on the ground and donned a top hat-the photographer's wife and son, Mrs. Henry C. White and Nelson White, and Will Howe Foote.

Harry Hoffman blowing horn as Old Lyme artists depart for a picnic

Photograph, ca. 1907

Lyme Historical Society Archives

William Henry Howe, Gifford Beal, Clark Voorhees, Allen B. Talcott, and Will Howe Foote on a boat

Photograph

Lyme Historical Society Archives

Lewis Cohen and Clark Voorhees with outdoor painting gear

Photograph

Lyme Historical Society Archives

Old Lyme artists at a dance in the studio of Bessie Potter Vonnoh, 1910

Photograph

Lyme Historical Society Archives

Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916)

Self-Portrait, 1902

Pencil and wash

Florence Griswold Museum

77.10

Ranger took seriously the endeavor of establishing in Old Lyme "an American school of painters of landscape." Although well respected by the artists who joined him there in 1900, Ranger's authoritarian manner and passionate commitment to traditional Old Master painting techniques were not above mockery, including by the artist himself. In this self-caricature, Ranger laughingly portrays his own portly form, dressed for outdoor sketching.

Just before coming to Old Lyme, Ranger initiated a bitter libel lawsuit against a critic who questioned the originality of his paintings. Perhaps at Miss Florence's boardinghouse, among friends, he could forget the legal proceeding (during which future Old Lyme artist Arthur Dawson testified on his behalf) and allow himself a bit of fun.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935), Walter Griffin (1861-1935), Henry Rankin Poore (1859-1940), and Will Howe Foote (1874-1965)

Caricature of the Lyme Art Colony, 1905

Oil and graphite on panel

Florence Griswold Museum

1987.8

Three of the artists who painted this composition later collaborated on an Impressionist landscape panel for the Griswold House dining room. Unlike their dining room panel, which became a tourist attraction, this quickly executed painting on bare wood was created for their private enjoyment. It reflects the boardinghouse artists' inside jokes and constant ribbing.

Many of the symbols in this panel play on the artists' names and foibles, and are repeated in the made-up crest for the Knockers' Club painted over the fireplace in the dining room. The hammer probably signals the intent to "knock," or roast, members of the art colony-a favorite pastime. The oafish figure clasping the tail of the winking white horse may refer to a famous incident in which "Rube Griff" (Walter Griffin) bought what he thought was a sedate old horse for use as a model, only to find that the animal had a mind of its own. The flies bearing down on the horse likely refer to the swarms that plagued the Griswold House dining room, which had no window screens. Along the bottom edge, the artists have signed twisted versions of their names, including "Muley Hassam Assiz" -- a nickname Childe Hassam loved because he thought it made him sound Turkish.

With its odd combination of symbols, this cryptic painted panel may also be a rebus, or word picture. See if you can figure it out!

Will Howe Foote (1874-1965)

Sketches of Lyme Art Colony members in scrapbook of Henry C. White, ca. 1875-1917

Mixed media

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. George C. White

Reflecting the frequent games and impromptu jokes among members of the Lyme Art Colony, the humorous sketches on these pages were given to the artist Henry C. White by Will Howe Foote. Weeksie, the furry dog on the right, also originally appeared in Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase, but was painted out by the artist after the animal died so as not to sadden the dog's owner, William Henry Howe, during meals in the dining room. A second drawing of Allen Talcott on another page of the scrapbook resembles the hulking figure in the caricature panel by Childe Hassam, Walter Griffin, Will Howe Foote, and Henry Rankin Poore, which is elsewhere in the exhibition.

Wiggle Game Drawings

The spirit of collaboration and humor among the painters who gathered at Miss Florence's boardinghouse emerges most clearly in these wiggle drawings. During the wiggle game, members of the Lyme Art Colony drew curves on a page. At the end, players displayed their hilarious solutions to the problem of incorporating all the wiggles into a single composition. In contrast to the dining room panels, by which the artists of the Florence Griswold House hoped to be remembered for their reputations as painters, these expressive sketches, created for private amusement, offered them a chance to exercise their sense of whimsy, try new subjects, and poke fun at the world around them. Will Howe Foote gently caricatures artists, including one rotund figure in plaid stockings that resembles his uncle William Henry Howe. Matilda Browne forsakes cows and horses for human figures. While some of the wiggle game drawings depict fanciful subjects, like the imp by Jules Turcas, others present glimpses of colony life, such as a studio on runners, which the Old Lyme painters used in the winter.

Matilda Browne (1869-1947)

Wiggle Drawing

Graphite on paper

Florence Griswold Museum

1984.169

Will Howe Foote (1874-1965)

"Oh Fudge"

Graphite on paper

Florence Griswold Museum

1984.44

Will Howe Foote (1874-1965)

Wiggle Drawing

Graphite on paper

Florence Griswold Museum

1984.85

Jules Turcas (1854-1917)

Wiggle Drawing

Graphite on paper

Florence Griswold Museum

1984.148

Unidentified Artist

Wiggle Drawing

Graphite on paper

Florence Griswold Museum

1984.101

The Goodman Presentation Case

Old Lyme had become one of America's most prestigious art colonies by the second decade of the group's existence. The annual exhibition, which had begun as a benefit for the town library, drew national attention and visitors eager to purchase the artists' works. Numerous former inhabitants of Florence Griswold's boardinghouse bought property locally and put down roots. They dreamed of having their own permanent gallery, and in 1914 established the Lyme Art Association to raise funds to build an exhibition space. Seven years later, the Association finally opened its gallery on land adjacent to the Griswold House, where the artists had first fostered their sense of fellowship. In 1929, members of the Lyme Art Association, led by Harry Hoffman, presented a portfolio of works on paper to their president, William O. Goodman, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. A Chicago collector and philanthropist, Goodman and his wife had endowed a prize at the Association. Selections from that collective endeavor are exhibited here.

Lyme Art Association members presenting portfolio to William O. Goodman, 1929

Photograph

Lyme Historical Society Archives

Thomas Watson Ball (1863-1934)

Square Rigger at Sea

Watercolor on paper

Gift of Mrs. Robert D. Graff

1975.6.16

Bruce Crane (1857-1937)

French Village

Colored pencil on paper

Gift of Mrs. Robert D. Graff

1975.6.32

Louis Paul Dessar (1867-1952)

Connecticut Hillside

Graphite and black chalk on paper

Gift of Mrs. Robert D. Graff

1975.6.15

If These Walls Could Talk

Decorating the walls of the Griswold House dining room had a lasting impact on several of the Old Lyme artists, who continued to paint both domestic and public murals. The Lyme Art Colony's heyday coincided with an era of revived interest in mural painting following the enthusiastic response to the wall decorations in the buildings at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Along with the dining room walls and painted doors on the first floor of the Griswold House, Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase (1901-05) immortalized the artists associated with the boardinghouse and became a symbol of the colony's identity that was praised in early journalists' coverage of Old Lyme. The notoriety of these murals was not lost on their creators; Frank Vincent DuMond declared of a subsequent mural commission, "This is an unparalleled opportunity to make a lasting name and leave a monument behind me." Murals constituted a significant part of DuMond's creative output after coming to Old Lyme. In 1903, he painted three murals for the entrance hall of Central Park Studios, the cooperative apartment and studio complex on West 67th Street in New York City, developed and financed by Old Lyme artists. His most prestigious mural commission was for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Studies for those compositions hang on this wall. At the same time, the unique atmosphere DuMond and the other artists created in the Griswold House dining room, which was the site of such fondly remembered interactions, inspired artists like Everett L. Warner and Harry Hoffman to try their hands at murals in homes in Old Lyme. Hoffman, whose fanciful Harvest Moon Walk hangs in this gallery, even outfitted a room in his house as an undersea paradise, adorning the walls with murals of coral and tropical fish.

Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1961)

The Westward March of Civilization: Departure from the East, 1915

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Goodwin

1984.21.5

The Westward March of Civilization: Arrival in the West, 1915

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Goodwin

1984.21.6

The paintings on this wall are studies for DuMond's murals for the triumphal Arch of the Setting Sun at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Gridded for transfer to a monumental surface, these preparatory sketches depict a young man's departure from the Eastern seaboard. The area's historic character is suggested by a white church like the one in Old Lyme, an iconic building that also appears in Henry Rankin Poore's processional mural, The Fox Chase (1901-05). Led by the allegorical figure of Fortune blowing her trumpet, the pioneers arrive in California, a brightly colored paradise where they are greeted by Conquest enthroned in an orange grove. Following a team of oxen like those so beloved by Old Lyme's animal painters, the group includes portraits of some of the architects, sculptors, and painters through whom culture would flourish in the West. Although he chiefly devoted himself to landscape painting during his time at Florence Griswold's house, DuMond's murals demonstrate his considerable skill as a figure painter, a branch of art he also taught to his summer pupils in Old Lyme.

Everett L. Warner (1877-1963)

Winter Panorama

Oil on wood

Gift of Old Lyme Impressionists, Inc.

1983.11

Perhaps inspired by the winter scene he contributed to the decorations in the Griswold House dining room, Warner painted this panoramic landscape on a piece of pine that was once installed over the fireplace of an old house. As viewers, we experience the exposed, snowy vista from within a band of chilly blue shadows at the lower edge of the painting. Thick strokes of white, laid on with a heavy impasto, and the trackless expanse of snow on the precipice amplify the inhospitable mood of the scene. Warner's winter wonderland must have provided a bracing contrast to the fire that would have blazed in the hearth beneath this panel.

Friends and Neighbors

Many artists who lived, socialized, or exhibited annually with the inhabitants of the Griswold House did not participate in decorating the dining room, nor do they appear in Henry Rankin Poore's The Fox Chase (1901-05). Timing, rather than any stylistic criteria, may have been the most crucial factor; after 1905, the only major additions to The Fox Chase were the restoration of George H. Bogert's portrait and the insertion of Matilda Browne, painter of a door panel scene, as a belated nod to her status as a Griswold House artist. Completed over time, but concentrated before 1911, the panels were theoretically all "taken," although some were never executed. Spaces remain empty today, but the iconic status the room attained early on may have discouraged artists like Edmund Greacen or George Brainerd Burr, who arrived later, from identifying strongly enough with earlier members of "The School of Lyme" to request a role in the decoration. Others, like painter Robert C. Minor, a longtime presence in Connecticut, sympathized with the landscape colony's aims, but probably never visited Florence Griswold's house because of his health. Women artists, in particular, had difficulty finding acceptance in the circle of friends. Labeled "blots" by the mostly male artists of the Griswold House who thought of them as amateurs and dilettantes, few succeeded unless accepted into the group by marriage or -- like Browne -- in recognition of their sheer talent. The artists whose works appear in this section of the exhibition enjoyed close personal and creative relationships with the painters responsible for the Griswold House decorations, a testament to the fact that the bonds among artists at Old Lyme were not restricted to the boardinghouse's four walls. The artistic conversation that began there easily expanded to include new voices.

Robert C. Minor (1839-1904)

Landscape with Pool, ca. 1903

Oil on canvas

Gift in Memory of Charles Davis White

1980.98

Painted in black and white, probably to be reproduced in print, this landscape still conveys the Tonalist sensibility and strong contrasts between lights and darks that led one journalist in 1903 to call Minor "the dean of the Lyme colony of artists." This title was more metaphorical than actual; the artist lived in nearby Waterford for the last decade of his life, but was so disabled by illness that he had trouble painting or traveling. His kinship with Henry Ward Ranger and the other artists of the Florence Griswold House expressed itself not only in his poetic depictions of the landscape, but also in his decision to send his paintings to the Old Lyme group's annual exhibition in 1903.

Daniel Putnam Brinley (1879-1963)

Untitled Landscape

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mrs. Edward C. Brinley, Jr.

2006.17

Brinley's dryly brushed and nearly monochromatic landscape may depict the area around Old Black Point, which he probably saw when he visited Old Lyme in 1904. In addition to the artists who settled for the summer at Florence Griswold's house, others, like Brinley, stayed only a short time, drawn temporarily to the area by its picturesque scenery and the presence of friends from the Art Students League. Because he had lived in Riverside as a child, Brinley knew Connecticut well. Thus, soon after visiting Old Lyme, he left the familiar coastal countryside for Europe. There, he set aside the muted Tonalism evident in this painting in favor of a more Impressionist approach. After he returned to America in 1908, Brinley moved to the Silvermine area of Connecticut, where he joined an art colony more modernist in orientation than Old Lyme.

George Brainerd Burr (1876-1951), with five other artists

Picnic at Devil's Hopyard, ca. 1912-13

Oil on canvas

Florence Griswold Museum

X1972.203

This painting incorporates contributions by several artists associated with the colony in its second decade. On an outing with William Chadwick, Charles Ebert, Will Howe Foote, Harry Hoffman, Gregory Smith, and their wives, Burr began a plein air sketch of another group of picnickers gathered around a spotless white cloth on the riverbank. Ever playful, the other artists intervened to help Burr create a "masterpiece" in the spirit of the moment. Their merriment disturbed the picnicking subjects, who thought the raucous group was ridiculing them until they saw the painters' collective product.

Perhaps because he was not in Old Lyme before 1910, Burr did not contribute to the decorations in Florence Griswold's house; however, he created his own personal version of the famous ensemble by soliciting sketches from colony artists for what he called a "gallery of modern masters" in his house on Lyme Street.

Edmund Greacen (1877-1949)

Bow Bridge, Lyme, Connecticut, ca. 1912

Oil on canvas

Purchase

2006.14

Bow Bridge, the modest span over the Lieutenant River, became a favorite subject of artists visiting Old Lyme. Unlike most of the painters in the colony's second decade, Greacen shifted away from gestural Impressionism and toward the Tonalism on view in Bow Bridge. Here, he softly blends pigments into melting swaths of green that harmonize with the undulating bridge and road. Looser dashes of color and bare canvas around the edges of the painting impart an evanescent quality to Greacen's vision of a summer day. He and his family spent a couple of years in the art colony at Giverny, in France, before arriving in Old Lyme, their American Giverny, in 1910. That year, they stayed with Florence Griswold through the winter, and continued to summer in town until 1917. Perhaps because of Greacen's increasingly Tonalist approach, or because he did not identify himself as one of the colony's founders, he did not add a panel to any of the empty slots in the Griswold House dining room.

Katherine Langhorne Adams (1885-1977)

Sparkling Sea, ca. 1918-20

Oil on canvas

Collection of Jonathan D. Carlisle

Adams's staccato brushwork and unusual palette of purples and greens convey her distinctive approach to Impressionism. Her canvas echoes Childe Hassam's views of the Maine coast, and may have been executed during a trip there. Despite her stylistic affinity with Hassam, Adams faced the same obstacle as many women artists at Old Lyme -- breaking into the clubbish atmosphere created by the predominantly male circle of artists who stayed at Florence Griswold's house. As an unmarried woman, Adams lodged with her mother at Boxwood Manor or the Old Lyme Inn, along with numerous other female art students, whom the colony members referred to as "blots." Perhaps because of her talent, Adams did crack the inner circle; she modeled for Hassam, and can be seen at the women's table in the famous photo of the "Hot Air Club" meals held during the summer months on Miss Florence's veranda. Although not invited to paint a panel in the house, Adams did contribute a painting to the town's library, cementing her legacy in Old Lyme on her own terms.

(above: Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1961), The Westward March of Civilization: Departure from the East, 1915, Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Goodwin

1984.21.5)

(above: Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1961), The Westward March of Civilization: Arrival in the West, 1915, Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Goodwin

1984.21.6)

(above: Childe Hassam (1859-1935), Walter Griffin (1861-1935), Henry Rankin Poore (1859-1940), and Will Howe Foote (1874-1965), Caricature of the Lyme Art Colony, 1905, Oil and graphite on panel.Florence Griswold Museum 1987.8)

Many of the symbols in this panel play on the artists' names and foibles, and are repeated in the made-up crest for the Knockers' Club painted over the fireplace in the dining room. The hammer probably signals the intent to "knock," or roast, members of the art colony -- a favorite pastime. The oafish figure clasping the tail of the winking white horse may refer to a famous incident in which "Rube Griff" (Walter Griffin) bought what he thought was a sedate old horse for use as a model, only to find that the animal had a mind of its own. The flies bearing down on the horse likely refer to the swarms that plagued the Griswold House dining room, which had no window screens. Along the bottom edge, the artists have signed twisted versions of their names, including "Muley Hassam Assiz" -- a nickname Childe Hassam loved because he thought it made him sound Turkish.

With its odd combination of symbols, this cryptic painted panel may also be a rebus, or word picture. See if you can figure it out!

(above: Harry Hoffman (1874-1966), Harvest Moon Walk, ca. 1912, Oil on canvas. Anonymous Gift X1972.214)

RL readers may also enjoy:

Also see The Lyme Art Colony: An American Giverny.

Links to sources of information outside of our web site are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other web sites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. TFAO neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations. Although TFAO includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see TFAO's General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History. Individual pages in this catalogue will be amended as TFAO adds content, corrects errors and reorganizes sections for improved readability. Refreshing or reloading pages enables readers to view the latest updates.

Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting the sub-index page for the Florence Griswold Museum in Resource Library.

Visit the Table of Contents for Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.