Florence Griswold Museum

Connecticut

The boarders at this Old Lyme house paid their keep by painting directly on the walls and doors.

culturehistoricalpeople

Florence Griswold ran a boardinghouse, and her tenants were painters. They came by train from New York and Boston, spent their days painting outdoors along the Lieutenant River and in the apple orchard, and sometimes had cattle brought in from local farms to pose. Then they started painting the house itself. Forty-one painted panels survive in the downstairs rooms, on walls and on doors. The dining room, where the artists argued about the issues of the day, became the showcase. They were copying a habit picked up at inns in the French art colonies of Barbizon, Giverny and Pont-Aven, where many of them had stayed. Childe Hassam contributed a panel. So did Willard Metcalf, Henry Rankin Poore, Harry Hoffman and a dozen others. Matilda Browne was the only woman invited to paint one, and she got the place of honor: Miss Florence's own bedroom door.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
where American Impressionist artists lived and painted—often directly on the walls and doors of the house

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nearby, on the same roads

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  • Connecticut River 3.7 mi The border between Massachusetts and Connecticut was drawn because of an argument over river tolls that nobody won.
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