Florence Griswold

Willard Metcalf: May Night (1906)

Florence Ann Griswold ( December 25, 1850 - December 6, 1937 ) was an American teacher in Old Lyme , Connecticut . After 1899, she became the landlady and head of the summer school at the core of the artists' colony established there around the tonalist Henry Ward Ranger and from 1903 around the impressionist Childe Hassam .

Life

Florence Griswold was the youngest daughter of the ship's captain Robert Harper Griswold. In 1878 she opened the Griswold Home School for girls together with her mother and her two sisters and worked there as a teacher for 14 years. After her parents and sister Louise died, Florence and sister Adele were left in a difficult financial situation and decided to take in guests at the Griswoldhaus.

In 1899 the American painter Henry Ward Ranger came to Old Lyme in search of a place where he wanted to build a residence based on the model of the French artists' colony Barbizon . He established his colony in this place and made it an enclave of tonalism . Florence Grisworld converted her house into a summer school for artists. Old Lyme subsequently became the American Barbizon or the Fontainebleau in Connecticut.

Childe Hassam: Stone Bridge, Old Lyme, Connecticut (1905)

In 1903 the then already known Childe Hassam came to the place, although he actually still lived in Cos Cob , and shaped Old Lyme as a paradise for American Impressionism. Hassam came regularly in the summer up to 1912, from 1905 Willard Metcalf was also a guest at Florence Griswold, who became better known as Miss Florence . He painted the painting May Night in 1906 and captured the Griswold house and Miss Florence on it. When he wanted to give her the picture, she declined because she considered it one of his masterpieces. The following year the painting won a gold medal in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC , where it hangs to this day.

In the following years art students and artists regularly rented rooms from Florence Griswold. Other well-known guests were the sisters Lydia and Breta Longacre or Edmund W. Graecen . From 1914 Wilson Irvine lived in the colony. The first wife of American President Woodrow Wilson , Ellen Wilson , was also a guest of Miss Florence as a student and they both became good friends. In 1914, Florence Griswold attended the wedding of President Jessie Sayer Wilson's daughter.

In 1921, Florence Griswold became the first director of the Lyme Art Association's gallery , and her house was converted into the Florence Griswold Museum , which still houses both art and historical objects.

literature

• Deborah Epstein Solon: Colonies of American Impressionism. Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach 1999; ISBN 0-940872-24-2

Web links

• Florence Griswold Museum
• Biography of Florence Griswold in the Florence Griswold Museum
• Florence Griswold in the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame