Lyme Art Association

This wonderful gallery is next to the Florence Griswold house. 

The current exhibitions are of works by the Associatioin's enrolled artists.  It is comforting to see that exceptional artists are still creating terrific art today.

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.

The Grounds at the Florence Griswold Museum

Behind the Florence Griswold House, there is a barn with exhibitions explaining the house's history.  

Through the barn's open doors, there is a view into a garden like the one that was there in her time.

And, most suitably, while I was there the fields beyond the house and gardens were filled with artists painting en plain air.

 

Florence Griswold House

 So long as I was nearby, just off the Connecticut River, I visited Florence Griswold's house.  She inherited her house in Old Lyme from her sea captain father.  Ms. Griswold converted it into a boarding house. 

 In 1899 the artist Henry Ward Ranger rented a room.  The next year more of Ranger's artist friends came for the summer.  For more than a decade, artists like Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, John Henry Twachtman and J. Alden Weir stayed with Ms. Griswold and formed the Lyme Art Colony.

Many of the artists painted panels in Ms. Griswold's kitchen and dining room.

Willard Metcalf painted the Captain Lord mansion in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1920.

Copper Beech Inn

 South Pacific ended around 10:30 p.m. and Goodspeed Opera House is almost two hours from Ridgefield. Staying at Copper Beech Inn in the Ivoryton part of Essex made more sense than attempting the drive.

The inn was built in the late 19th century as a private home for the CEO of a company that made piano keys from ivory.  Over the years it ran into the woes that often bedevil many big old homes.  In 1972 it was bought out of bankruptcy and turned into a bed and breakfast inn and a fine dining restaurant.

South Pacific at Goodspeed Opera House

Goodspeed is a stunning building, nearly 150 years old, next to the Connecticut River in East Haddam, Connecticut.  Musicals have been presented at Goodspeed since 1968.

The building's layout is unique.  The performance space is in the highest two floors, making it difficult for the increasingly elderly clientele and for loading scenery.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's superb musical, South Pacific, is being performed through August 11.

As in all theaters, photographs and videos are prohibited during the performance.  I interpreted the prohibition as applying until the curtain came down.   It was raised again as the cast returned for introductions and applause and to thank the orchestra.  The show was toe-tappingly good.

Mmmmmm, Waffles!

 

A waffle, maple syrup, strawberries and whipped cream.  Hard to beat.

Linked to City Daily Photo's August theme of fruit.