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VERNON GIVERNY ... PASSIONATELY
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Giverny
in Uncle Sam's country : We often talk here about the American artists of Giverny, we even use the word " an American colony" but we tend to forget that the majority of them spent only a few weeks there, a summer season or a few months at best. What did they do next? Where did they go? These questions are hardly ever asked and it is as if these artists had simply stopped painting and vanished. However, most of them continued their careers in their own countries where they often gathered in new "colonies", just to mention among the most important ones: Old Lyme or Cos Cob, on the north-east coast of the United States.
Old Lyme, a small village in Connecticut (between New York and Boston) was discovered 10 1889 by the painter Henry Ward Ranger, a follower of the Barbizon school. He was so enthralled that he settled there and encouraged his friends to come with him. This is how a kind of "American Barbizon" was born. This small village on the Connecticut River was easy to access from New York by train. Its is located in a marshy district with estuaries and salt meadows, picturesque hills, shimmering expanses of water, granite outcroppings and old farms surrounded by stone walls. Many years before artists settled there, a visitor had already written in 1876 "The variety in the landscape would drive an artist to distraction. It is a singular mixture of the wild and the tame, of the austere and the cheerful." In 1903, Childe Hassam came to Lyme for the first time. This painter was a member of the impressionist school and after him came lots of other Impressionist artists so that Lyme switched from being an "American Barbizon" to an "American Giverny", a name that the village still proudly bears. Among the newcomers, there was Willard Metcalf, the very man who is said to have discovered Giverny. In no time at all, Lyme became "the most famous Impressionist-oriented art colony in America."(William H. Gerdts, American Impressionism (New York1984) "
Is it possible to explain in a few words the difference between an American impressionist and a French one? This is a difficult task because of the diversity in both style and subject matter not only from artist to artist but even from canvas to canvas by the same painter. However, a few
trends can be suggested : in the introduction to the exhibition entitled
"A Matter of Style: The Influence of French Art on the Old Lyme
Art Colony", (October 2004 at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old
Lyme)one reads : " In comparison to the French Impressionists,
many of the Lyme Impressionists adopted the style of their French counterparts,
but were selective as to their choice of subject matter. [… They
avoided subjects that were unsettling. In addition, while they painted
the same subject over and over, they did so without the scientific rigor
of the French." This means that instead of merely copying the French style, they re-interpreted it, blending European techniques with their own American approaches and genius. But despite these differences, both groups knew that the real subject was the overall sense of light. In Old Lyme, artists quickly gathered in Miss Florence Griswold's boarding house and it became a kind of Hotel Baudy as in Giverny. The house was known as the Home of the Artists, or as Childe Hassam dubbed it, The Holy House. Florence Griswold's welcome and the price - a mere $7 a week for board plus the friendly presence of other artists - was hard to resist and the owner had to enlarge the house and convert outbuildings into studios.
Today, very much like Giverny, Old Lyme and Cos Cob are art centres with a museum dedicated to the painters that worked there, a historic place - Florence Griswold's and the Bush-Holley's house- and the presence of numerous artists who come there to wok or to exhibit their paintings in the galleries of the villages that still retain the atmosphere that prevailed there a century ago.
Very special thanks to Mr Michael Lloyd who helped us prepare this page and whose Website 'The Lyme Art Colony: an American Giverny ' (http://www.lymeart.com) is a must for discovering American impressionism, a moment of the history of art that is still too obscure. Do not hesitate to visit this website...
Old Lyme Art and American Impressionsim Florence Griswold
Museum in Old Lyme A Matter
of Style: The Influence of French Art on the Old Lyme Art Colony Exhibition
in the Florence Griswold Museum October 9, 2004 - April 17, 2005
Bush-Holley
Historic Site in Cos Cob
Photo credits 1:
http://www.oceansbridge.com/art/customer/product.php More
pages about Claude Monet and Giverny: * The
making of Monet's garden * Giverny,
an American colony
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