Impressionism in Connecticut.(Current and coming)

Around the turn of the twentieth century, urban artists made a beeline for the country at the first hint of summer. Artists' colonies soon sprang up all over New England, both on the coast and inland on rivers, lakes, and ponds. The towns of Old Lyme and Cos Cob, Connecticut, both quite accessible from New York City, were popular destinations for some of the leading impressionist painters of the period. These artists found the beautiful scenery perfect for the plein-air painting that was a hallmark of the style, and they enjoyed the camaraderie of other artists in the relaxed environment of summertime. Two events in Connecticut celebrate this period in the history of American art.

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In Old Lyme painters who did not own property gathered at the house of Florence Griswold who took in boarders to make ends meet. Her large Greek revival house was the epicenter for lively gatherings, and today there are some forty paintings executed on the walls, doors, and other interior surfaces of the building by some thirty artists, including Willard Metcalf, Childe Hassam, Carleton Wiggins, and Matilda Browne. Between 1899, when the painter Henry Ward Ranger arrived in Old Lyme, and the death of Miss Griswold in 1937, more than two hundred artists passed through the doors of her boardinghouse.

Long a part of the Florence Griswold Museum, the house and its unique decorations were sorely in need of restoration, which has recently been completed. The process is detailed in Design notes on page 128 of this issue. The museum's large holdings, known as the Lyme Art Colony Collection, consist of four thousand artifacts and archival documents and nearly five hundred artworks. Many of the latter will be rotated within the house on a regular basis so the scope of the collection may be seen over time.

Not long ago the Florence Griswold Museum constructed a building called the Krieble Gallery to better display its large collection of American art. Now after touring these galleries, visitors can walk through the Florence Griswold House to experience a very real sense of the surroundings in which many of these artists worked and relaxed over the course of nearly forty summers.

Closer to New York City, but also in Connecticut, was the art colony in Cos Cob (now part of Greenwich), which was centered around one of the leaders of the impressionist movement, John Twachtman. Over the years, the colony included more than a few of the most esteemed artists of the period such as Hassam, Theodore Robinson, and J. Alden Weir. The Holley House (now the Bush-Holley House), an inn and boardinghouse, was a gathering place for the artists, some of whom visited only in the summer while others lived there all year. In the early 1890s Twachtman and Weir, his close friend and fellow artist, taught painting in Cos Cob during the summer, primarily to the aspiring ...