Old Lyme art colony

Art colony in Old Lyme, Connecticut, US

The Old Lyme art colony of Old Lyme, Connecticut was established in 1899 by American painter Henry Ward Ranger, and was in its time the most famous art colony in the United States, and the first to adopt Impressionism.[1]

## History[edit]

Church at Old Lyme, Childe Hassam, 1905. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. May Night, Willard Metcalf, 1906

Ranger began his American equivalent to the French Barbizon school, a similar seasonal retreat from less bucolic communities, in the modest boarding house of Florence Griswold, bringing fellow artists Lewis Cohen, Henry Rankin Poore, Louis Paul Dessar, and William Henry Howe in 1900. The group came to be dominated, socially and artistically, by Childe Hassam after his appearance in 1903.[2]

The colony was important to the development of American Impressionism. Perhaps 200 painters passed through the colony during its height in the next 30 years.[3] Many significant American Impressionist paintings of the era depict buildings in and around Old Lyme, notably the Old Lyme Congregational Church, painted by Hassam and others. The 1906 painting May Night by Willard Metcalf shows the boardinghouse by night, with a figure said to be Griswold herself. This was the first contemporary painting purchased by the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Old Lyme remains a thriving art community. The Griswold House has been transformed into an art museum, the Florence Griswold Museum, affectionately called "Flo Gris", by local residents. The museum holds artists' work along with personal possessions of the artists who frequented there.

## Artists[edit]

Artists of the Old Lyme art colony include:

* Louis Betts
* Matilda Browne
* William Chadwick
* Bruce Crane
* Roger Wilson Dennis
* Frank DuMond
* Gladys Kelley Fitch[4]
* Arthur Heming
* Harry Hoffman
* Wilson Irvine
* Allen Butler Talcott
* Edward Charles Volkert
* Guy C. Wiggins
* Bessie Potter Vonnoh
* Robert Vonnoh

## References[edit]

1. ^ Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, Ross King, page 117
2. ^ Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, Ross King, page 117
3. ^ “High Thinking and Low Living”, The Story of the Old Lyme Art Colony, Laura Wolff Scanlan, HUMANITIES, September/October 2007, Volume 28, Number 5
4. ^ "Gladys Kelley Fitch (Fistch) (America, 1896) "Tea Party"". James D. Julia. Archived from the original on 1 July 2017. Retrieved 31 December 2015.

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Childe Hassam

Paintings|

* Spring Morning in the Heart of the City (1890)
* Winter in Union Square (1890)
* Coast Scene, Isles of Shoals (1901)
* Broadway and 42nd Street (1902)
* Cliff Rock--Appledore (1903)
* Spring on West 78th Street (1905)
* The Water Garden (1909)
* July Fourteenth, Rue Daunou, 1910 (1910)
* Surf, Isles of Shoals (1913)
* The Avenue in the Rain (1917)

Related|

* The Ten
* Old Lyme art colony

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