OLD LYME, CT.- 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.