Barn in a Flower Garden
On a warm, summer day, when this image was taken, the garden beside the old barn was abloom with tall, colorful groupings of flowers that seemed to encircle the building and everyone who walked along its gravel paths. This scene is one that artists seeking nature’s inspirations would have been drawn to, eager to linger in, to study the light, and spend time sketching and painting. In fact, over 200 American artists did just that, right here in Old Lyme, Connecticut, at what was to become the Lyme Art Colony at the start of the 20th Century.
Originally the stately residence of Robert Griswold, a prosperous ship captain in the water-rich town of Old Lyme, the demise of the family fortune forced a transformation of their home into a finishing school for girls in 1878. By the late 1890s, Florence, the last surviving family member was penniless and forced once again to find a new way to maintain her home and so decided to take in boarders, renting rooms for $7.00 per week.
The arrival of artists craving a community of like-minded fellow painters while pursuing their art and surrounded by the beauty of a New England shoreline village created one of the most sought after art colonies for American Impressionist painters from 1899 through the 1930s.
“Miss Florence” as she was known to her boarders, was often described as the “keeper of the artist colony”. It was her custom to invite her guests to create a painting on a door or wall panel. Throughout her home, there are over 40 such unique works gifted by her talented boarders. Today, her family home, and its onsite museum, stand as a living tribute to a special period in American art history which continues to delight and enrich the lives of countless visitors to this historical homage to American Impressionism.
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