Lyme Art Colony
"Lyme, Connecticut, was destined to become the setting of an art colony. A short train ride from New York City, late 19th century artists soon recognized it was a scenic place of river lowlands, small forests, salt meadows, colonial farms, and an old village. The town, now called Old Lyme, was a ship-building center situated near the Connecticut River, the Long Island Sound, and countryside—an ideal locale for artists to paint out-of-doors. The artist Clark
... (view more)
Lyme Art Colony
"Lyme, Connecticut, was destined to become the setting of an art colony. A short train ride from New York City, late 19th century artists soon recognized it was a scenic place of river lowlands, small forests, salt meadows, colonial farms, and an old village. The town, now called Old Lyme, was a ship-building center situated near the Connecticut River, the Long Island Sound, and countryside—an ideal locale for artists to paint out-of-doors. The artist Clark Voorhees (1871–1933) happened upon Old Lyme while on a bicycle trip in 1896. He quickly spread the word of the place’s paint-worthiness to his artist friends back in New York. Possibly at Voorhees’s suggestion, Henry Ward Ranger (1858–1915) arrived soon after and boarded with the sociable art patron Miss Florence Griswold in her grand Georgian mansion. Miss Florence’s home, opened to many more artist boarders, would become the epicenter of the influential Lyme Art Colony. By August of 1899, Old Lyme was being vaulted as an “American Barbizon” with Ranger as its leader, and artists came to capture the landscape in subtle, tonalist palettes. The colony’s shift to impressionism a few years later was driven by the arrival of Childe Hassam (1859–1935), Willard Metcalf (1858–1925), and others. Their lively impressionist style soon dominated the Lyme Art Colony. Even after Miss Florence’s death in 1937, the legacy of the Old Lyme artists continues with the establishment of her home as a museum, which is still in operation today, retaining hundreds of the artists’ works—paintings that reflect the spirit of the place."
(hide)
Artists Associated with Lyme Art Colony — 10 artists:
