The Florence Griswold Museum: How a Boardinghouse Became an American Art Landmark
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Posted by Meg Nola Feb 28, 2009 |
Recently I wrote a suite101 article about French and American Impressionist views of spring, and I used Willard Metcalf’s 1906 May Night as the closer, noting how the work has a kind of luminous spellbound aura — in the way that May nights often do. The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut is where the painting permanently resides, along with many other American Impressionist treasures and the whole rich history of how Florence Griswold’s home came to be an early 20th century artist’s colony.
Florence Griswold (generally called Miss Florence) herself was born in 1850 to an established Old Lyme, Connecticut family. Her father was a ship captain when Old Lyme was a New England hub of shipbuilding and seafaring trade. The Griswolds owned a 12 acre estate and enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle, until the United States experienced economic changes and the shifting of commerce toward more modern forms of transport. To make ends meet, the Griswold home was at first used as a school and then a boardinghouse, with Miss Florence eventually being the only member of her family left to run the roost.
A visit from artist Henry Ward Ranger in 1899 brought new energy and life to the Griswold house. Ranger was searching for a spot to cultivate a new school of natural and landscape painting that would establish American artists on an equal footing with their European counterparts — and he found it at Old Lyme. Other painters like Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf and Matilda Browne (to name just a few) joined the group, which ultimately became known as the Lyme Art Colony. Old Lyme’s beautiful surroundings, the lively presence of the artists, and Miss Florence’s total devotion to her guests and their work proved to be a wonderful combination and the colony thrived into the 1920s.
Today, Miss Florence’s fully-restored home is now The Florence Griswold Museum, where one can visit the actual premises and take in the paintings and atmosphere, or you can drop by on-line. The Museum has an excellent website that includes historical and artistic information, works from the collection, educational features, scholarly essays, photos, along with a blog and a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and photos on Flickr. The FGM was even nice enough to put my article about Metcalf’s May Night on their blog right next to the caricature of the artist himself from the Museum’s great Fox Chase multi-scene painting. So stop by the FGM’s main page or “get social” with them — and use 21st century technology to discover and enjoy the spirit of the past.