The Gallery at the Florence Griswold Museum

While Ms. Griswold's boarding house -- home to some of America's best artists in the first two decades of the 20th century -- is  the historically important part of the museum, the gallery behind holds exhibitions. of art, some from a permanent collection and some more recent works that change from time to time.  

This is the entrance for the current exhibition.

The exhibition focuses on the origin of French Impressionism, which began 150 years ago with artists like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Manet and others, who influenced the American Impressionists like those who painted here, including Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, John Twachtman and Willard Metcalf.

The museum holds many works that had been in the art collection of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which was independent until acquired in 2009.  The collection was on the executive's floor, but tying up money in art is frowned upon by shareholders.   HSB donated the collection to this museum before the acquisition was completed.

Childe Hassam painted Apple Trees in Bloom during 2004, his second summer on these grounds.

This work by Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933) is Portrait of John Severinus Conway, 1883.  Vonnoh and his sculptor wife stayed and worked at the Griswold boarding house in 1905.  This painting was a 

gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company.

The sea trash featured in this cabinet of curiosities was collected by conceptual artist Mark Dion and his assistants in Connecticut and other New England towns for the museum's 2019 Fragile Earth exhibition.