The Florence Griswold Museum

This is the Florence Griswold House. It was built in 1817, and was inherited by Florence Griswold from her parents. Since she was unmarried, she decided to use the property as a boarding house to help pay off the debt load she also inherited. In 1899, a New York painter named Henry Ward Ranger came to stay at the house and promised to return the following summer with more artists in hopes of establishing a Barbizon-esque colony at the house. He made good on his promise and Miss Florence's house became a Mecca for painters looking to escape the city in favor of the rural countryside. Old Lyme offered everything they could hope for, and Miss Florence's hospitality and support gave this influx of artists the environment they needed to master their craft.

In 1910, the resident artists decided to renovate parts of the house. In addition to the wallpaper, furniture, rugs, carpets, etc. that was brought into the house, the painters also began to leave their own personal touches behind. It was these “personal touches” that captivated me while I was in the house. While leaving the Art Colony parlor, I turned and took a good look at the door on the west wall and saw the painting of a bull directly on the door. Living on the Connecticut shoreline, I have seen dozens of old houses from stone houses in the 1600s all the way to a governor's mansion from the 1950s. I have never seen painted door panels before in a house and this is what jumped out and grabbed me. As wonderful as the other specimens of art in the house were, I was fixated on the painted door panels. I left the parlor and ended up, almost being pulled, to the dining room in the rear of the home which, as it turns out, is where the largest collection of painted panels resides. The tour guide stationed in the dining room was gracious enough to, after checking my camera to make sure that I was not using a flash, give me a little history on the panels.

Henry Ward Ranger, when he first began to stay at the house in 1899, said that Old Lyme was "a place waiting to be painted." Ranger was schooled in France in the traditional Barbizon style. Barbizon was a colony of artists in France that painted French Impressionism. Impressionism deals mostly with landscapes and nature scenes. Ranger lived in New York City but traveled to Connecticut with the intention of setting up an art colony similar to the ones he was familiar with from his time in France. Florence Griswold's property and surrounding community provided the best location and soon, Florence Griswold's house turned into an art colony that attracted some of the best artists America had. Originally, the artists who stayed at the house were Tonalists which is characterized by subdued landscapes at dusk or twilight. Fog, mist and rain were commonly used as well in these kinds of paintings. After the arrival of Childe Hassam in 1903, Impressionism started to be the preferred style and those painters who painted in Tonalism began to clash with the new Impressionists coming into the house.

While the residing boarders may not have agreed on the style of their art, they were united by it. As a gesture of acceptance and admittance to the art colony, Florence Griswold would request an artist to paint a panel for her home. The first panels that were painted were done by Ranger and Henry Rankin Poore in 1901. It was done as a game of sorts – Ranger painted Bow Bridge by Moonlight on the right side of a door panel on a piece of canvas, then challenged Poore to complete the other side of the door panel. Poore painted Hound Dog Baying at Moon in response to the challenge, created a unified piece of art (see image at right). The reason the two scenes were done on canvas was in case Miss Florence wanted to remove them, but as it turned out, she adorned the paintings and starting asking other artists to paint directly onto panels so that she could have more in her home.

The panels themselves came from Killingly, or there abouts, and were made of mahogany wood. According to the tour guide, upon invitation to paint a panel, the artist would need to choose the size of his painting and then the panel would be ordered. Once the painting was done, it was fit into place on a door or on the wall. The scenes that are painted on the panels are landscapes and nature scenes for the most part, keeping with the Tonalist/Impressionist styles of the period. Another common element to some of the paintings are cows. All of the panels were done in oil paints and most of the landscape locations are from either the property or the town of Old Lyme. An interesting note: Only one woman was accepted into the Lyme Art Colony at the Griswold House – Matilda Browne. She was given the honor of painting two door panels that graced the door into Miss Florence’s bedroom.

The most unique panel that was created is a frieze above the fireplace in the dining room. It is called The Fox Chase by Henry Rankin Poore. He began the piece in 1901 and finished it in 1905. It is a caricature of the group of artists that stayed at the house and he continued to make changes to it as that group grew. In 1920, he added Matilda Browne, which was another symbol of acceptance for her into the art colony. I wanted to capture the entire frieze as close as possible, so I took a video of it (below). The landscape is of Old Lyme in the early 1900’s and has the traditional elements of a fox hunt; the fox at the far left of the painting being chased by hounds and men on horseback. The scene changes into something modern with the addition of the artists and some of the background elements such as a painter’s easel next to a cow and the Griswold House on the far right corner of the frieze. I started at the right and panned to the left.