The Florence Griswold House in Old Lyme, Connecticut, was built in 1817 and has survived many of the calamities of the country’s history from the Civil War and two World Wars, to the 1918 flu epidemic and the protracted Covid-19 pandemic. Through it all—from the time Florence Griswold opened her doors to visiting artists such as Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, and Matilda Browne to rent rooms and paint the bucolic Connecticut landscape—it has been a mecca for artists. The Florence Griswold Museum continues to be a place of history and one of contemporary presence.
Lilian Westcott Hale (1880–1963), Woman Resting, ca. 1942. Oil on canvas, 20 x 14 in. Gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, 2002.1.171.
It has drawn from its own collections to assemble the exhibition Dreams and Memories that runs through May 14, 2023. The museum notes, “The pandemic that transformed the world beginning in 2020 has prompted consideration of our communal future—as we look ahead, what are our dreams and aspirations, what memories and hopes guide our present and shape what comes next?
James Daugherty (1889-1974), Untitled Abstraction, ca. 1970. Oil on canvas, 95¼ x 59¼ in. Gift of the Friends of James Daugherty Foundation, 2017.4.3.
“Dreams and memories both manifest and generate ideas, perhaps no more powerfully than in art. This exhibition will combine historic and contemporary art from the Florence Griswold Museum’s permanent collection to explore the themes of dreams and memories as multidimensional drivers of artistic creativity and expressions of powerful forces in American society.”
Willard L. Metcalf (1858-1925), Ethelinda and James, 1890. Oil on canvas, 15 x 17 in. Purchase, 2017.9.
Lilian Wescott Hale’s Woman Resting, created around 1942, is, perhaps, the consummate subject in dreamland painting. To lie down for a nap on a soft bed with a comforter for warmth is a great luxury. Hale (1880-1963) was a member of the National Academy and one of Boston’s most respected artists.
The exhibition contains paintings of more than peaceful repose in its seven sections which include Reverie and Romance, The Creative Mind, Nostalgia, Nightmares and the Surreal, Identity Formation, American Dreams, and Collective Memory.
A recent acquisition in the museum’s collection, Winfred Rembert’s Cotton Pickers, composed with dye on carved and tooled leather, is in the exhibition’s section on Nightmares and the Surreal. Rembert (1945-2021) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir Chasing Me to My Grave. He picked cotton as a boy, was arrested during the civil rights movement and spent seven years on chain gangs after a near-lynching. His wife convinced him, when he was 51, to create scenes from his childhood using leather skills he had learned in prison.
Childe Hassam (1859–1935), Summer Evening, 1886. Oil on canvas, 121/8 x 203/8 in. Gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, 2002.1.71.
The museum describes the origins of an abstract painting in the collection. “Dreams have long been understood as metaphors for artistic vision, and therefore as realms that artists have sought to tap. One example in the Creative Mind category is James Daugherty’s Untitled Abstraction, circa 1970. The vibrant, fragmented forms of this painting mimic the confounding abstraction of dreams experienced while sleeping.”
Daugherty (1889-1974) was inspired by the modernist art he saw at the Armory Show in 1913. He also worked in a camouflage unit during World War I where he experimented with colors.
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