This year marks a special, and unique anniversary for the many French painters that rebelled against tradition at the renowned 1874 Paris Salon—displaying works in a “looser” style that we’ve come to know as impressionism. This date is not lost on institutions like Connecticut’s Florence Griswold Museum, honoring and celebrating this pivotal artistic movement that eventually reached American soil.
Lawton S. Parker (1868-1954), La Paresse, 1913. Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 in. Florence Griswold Museum, gift of the M. Christine Schwartz Collection, 2023.23.1.
“Impressionism 150: From Paris to Connecticut and Beyond commemorates the French artists’ break with the past and spread modern alternatives by tracing the impact of their advances on artists who translated impressionism to the United States,” explains museum curator Amy Kurtz Lansing. “As the historic site of the Lyme Art Colony, considered the home of American impressionism, the [Florence Griswold Museum] holds a collection that illustrates how American artists, particularly those who gravitated to northeastern art colonies, embraced the movement’s characteristics and strategies in various ways.”
Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933), Beside the River (Grez), 1890. Oil on canvas, 18 x 22 in. Florence Griswold Museum, purchase with additional gifts from Jonathan D. Carlisle and Charles T. Clark, 2022.17.
The exhibition of over 50 works, stemming from the museum’s permanent collection, “acknowledges American artists’ academic tendencies in the 1870s,” says Lansing, “then explores those artists’ exposure to impressionism abroad; the role of French artist colonies in nurturing the style, and the replication of the colony model in America in places like Cos Cob, Gloucester, Monhegan and Old Lyme, that facilitated impressionism’s spread through the beginning of World War I.”
Both French and Connecticut settings are juxtaposed in the exhibition, while also featuring new acquisitions. “The recent gift, La Paresse, 1913, which Lawton Parker (1868-1954) painted in Giverny and brought to Old Lyme, will be featured to consider different perspectives on the nude in French and American contexts as it relates to impressionism…,” Lansing adds.
Matilda Browne (1869–1947), Blossoming Flowers on River’s Edge, ca. 1907. Oil on board, 11¼ x 14 in. Florence Griswold Museum, Purchase, 2023.1.
She continues, “Parker reportedly began La Paresse (Idleness) indoors at his Giverny studio when a stretch of rainy weather kept him from working outside. Contrary to the rapid plein-air methods of earlier French impressionists, Parker spent over four months in the studio, scraping and reworking the canvas to his satisfaction. Few paintings demonstrate more clearly how American artists blended academic attention to anatomy with impressionist light and color. Parker’s women are usually depicted at leisure in a soothing color palette of violets and blues that became a signature of the so-called ‘Giverny Group’ of artists who exhibited their work under that label. The piece was shown at the 1913 Paris Salon, winning Parker the highest award for foreigners—the gold medal of the Société des Artistes Français.”
Mary Bradish Titcomb (1858-1927), Morning at Boxwood, circa 1910. Oil on canvas, 36¾ x 28¼ in. Florence Griswold Museum, Purchase, 2019.30.
Additional highlights include Matilda Browne’s (1869-1947) Blossoming Flowers on River’s Edge, circa 1907, featuring a “quickly executed” and “informal” landscape with florals—a style and technique that the artist was known for; and Robert Vonnoh’s (1858-1933) Beside the River (Grez), 1890. “[The piece] depicts a bridge that visitors to the vibrant international artist colony in Grez-sur-Loing depicted countless times in weather ranging from gray to glorious,” says Lansing. “Vonnoh’s experiences there between 1887 and 1891 contributed to his bold use of violets, blues and reds in a bright key.”
Join the Florence Griswold Museum in celebration of these many vibrant and insightful artworks, currently on view and hanging though September 8.
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