Lyme Art Association (LAA) is a nonprofit art organization established in 1914, with roots going back to 1902. The LAA maintains a historic art gallery located at 90 Lyme Street in the Old Lyme Historic District, Old Lyme, Connecticut. The gallery was built in 1921 to a design prepared by the architect and artist Charles A. Platt.[2] The association holds exhibitions throughout the year, featuring the work of member artists as well as visiting ones, with an emphasis on representational art[3] The building has a north-light studio, where the association conducts classes year-round.[4]
A 1902 flyer announcing an “Exhibition of Paintings”Henry Ward Ranger
The LAA is an outgrowth of the Old Lyme art colony, established by Henry Ward Ranger, a leading tonalist painter from New York. After visiting Old Lyme in 1899, Ranger returned the following year with like-minded tonalist painters. Boarding at the house of Florence Griswold, now the Florence Griswold Museum, they painted scenes of the local countryside.
In the summer of 1902, the administrators of the nearby public library invited the group to hold a two-day exhibition at the library.[5] Art enthusiasts travelling to the show from New York and Boston boosted sales and some of the proceeds were donated to the library.[6] The show, consisting entirely of landscape paintings depicting the local countryside, included the work of Tonalists such as Henry Ward Ranger, Allen Butler Talcott, Clark Voorhees, Frank DuMond, William Henry Howe, Gifford Beal, Walter Griffin, Louis Paul Dessar, Arthur Dawson, and Lewis Cohen.[7]
By 1913, the artists began to discuss building a permanent art gallery in town.[16] Poor lighting at the library had become an issue.[17] Furthermore, as many as forty artists were now exhibiting in the summer shows, and the library’s gallery space was inadequate.[18] In April 1914, the artists held an exhibition in New York City, managed by Florence Griswold, to raise money for a new building.[19]
On Friday, June 26, 1914, the artists and a group of local townspeople held a meeting at Griswold’s house, at which they approved articles of incorporation for the association (later renamed the Lyme Art Association) drawn up by Judge Walter C. Noyes. The group elected Noyes to be the association’s first president.[20]
In July 1914, the group filed a certificate of incorporation with the State of Connecticut, signed by Noyes, Joseph S. Huntington, and artists Lewis Cohen, William S. Robinson, and Frank Bicknell.[21] The new organization stated its intention to raise $40,000 for the construction of a permanent art gallery in Old Lyme.[22]
Florence Griswold Site Option for the Lyme Art Association, 1914
They sought to build, as one newspaper put it:
"...the long dreamed of Temple of Art, home of the association and the center to be, of an artistique manifestation that will have a greater national influence than ever."[23]
Building the gallery
In 1914, the association commissioned plans for an art gallery from New York architect Richard A. Walker, to cost $14,000, but with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, it postponed plans to build a new gallery.[24]
The association did not choose a site for the new building until 1917, when it purchased land from Florence Griswold, on Lyme Street, just south of her house.[25] The cost was $1,000.[26]
In July 1919, the association voted to join forces with the town of Old Lyme to build a new town hall, with the agreement that the association could hold their annual exhibition in the new building for one month each summer. The LAA withdrew from the project in December, when the town objected to any group having exclusive use of the town hall.[27][28][29]
Charles A. Platt plan for Lyme Art Association 1920
In 1920, the association commissioned American Renaissance architect Charles A. Platt to design the association’s new gallery, a design that he donated to the group.[30] Due to the fact the artists were self-funding and the resources were limited, the artists asked him to lower the skylights of his initial design, which he reluctantly agreed to do.[31] New London-based contractors Canning & Leary were awarded the contract to construct Platt's final design, for a building cost of $20,000.[32] Artist Lawton S. Parker chaired the building committee for LAA working with Charles Platt.[33] Work on the construction of the gallery began in September 1920.[34]
Lyme Art Association in 1922
On August 6, 1921, the Lyme Art Association Gallery was unveiled.[35] The building measured 25'x88' with a wing 25'x32' and one high story.[36] The gallery was built in a T-shape, with trellises wrapping around the back of the structure, which were ready to collect the vines that were beginning to grow.[37] The building featured "white-dipped"[38] shingles. The New York Times wrote about the unveiling:
"Greater appropriateness, beauty of proportions and refinement of taste could hardly be found. The building belongs to the location as completely as a Connecticut wildflower to the countryside...to come upon it in the pleasant landscape is recognize it immediately as an embodiment of art in harmony with its natural surroundings"[39]
Lyme Art Association Gallery inaugural exhibition August 1921Skylights above laylights at Lyme Art Association
Inside, the walls were "dusky-blue"[40] with "a faint suggestion of gold".[41] The lighting from the skylights was considered perfect, with an even distribution of natural light on the walls.[42] This was made possible by a translucent ceiling of white muslinlaylights below the skylights.[43] Inside the gallery, four large pillars stand, which can be removed to create one hall.[44]
1922 painting of Honorary Lyme Art Association President William O. Goodman by Oliver Dennett Grover
On June 11, 1938 the Lyme Art Association unveiled an additional wing, which it named the Goodman Gallery. Funds for the gallery were given by Erna Sawyer Goodman in memory of her husband, lumber tycoon William O. Goodman, who had been an honorary president of the association and a sponsor of many of its prizes. The builder of the new gallery, L.H. Tiffany, copied Platt's original design for the new gallery, but built it several steps lower, with two French doors leading out to a balcony that once overlooked a lily pond.[46][47]
In 1978, she completed a two-story art studio, and transformed the basement to accommodate a library, offices, and storage rooms.[51] Artists such as Robert Brackman, Deane G. Keller, and Lou Bonamarte, along with Chandler, taught in the space leased by the Academy.[52]
In June 1982, an historic flood hit Old Lyme.[53] A brook running behind the association was blocked with debris, causing five feet of water to fill the studio and downstairs offices occupied by the Academy.[54] Nevertheless, the academy continued to hold classes at the LAA until 1996 when its twenty-year lease expired.[55]
Exhibitions and events
Alphaeus P. Cole Gallery at Lyme Art AssociationLyme Art Association members serving tea during Centennial Exhibition in 2002
In 1921, during the 20th annual exhibition, Wilson Irvine was awarded the William S. Eaton Purchase Prize for his painting "Lingering Snow".[56] The 20th annual exhibition in the new gallery had a paid attendance of over 5,000, with sales of artwork exceeding $10,000.[57]
In the 21st Annual Exhibition in 1922 Ivan Olinsky was awarded the first award under the Museum Purchase Plan, a program instituted to place LAA member work in associate museum members. Olinsky's painting "Leonore in a Russian Blouse" was allotted to the Dayton Art Institute.[58][59]
1933 saw Lyme Art Association extend the exhibition season with their First Annual Autumn Exhibition.[60]
In October 1971, Lyme Art Association was included in the Old Lyme Historic District which was named to the National Register of Historic Places. This process was carried out by Mrs. John Crosby Brown, then President of the Lyme Historical Society-Florence Griswold Association.[61]
In 1972, heating was installed in the LAA gallery, allowing exhibitions to take place during the colder months.[62]
The Center Gallery was renamed the Alphaeus P. Cole Gallery in 1976. Cole, a noted local artist and member of LAA, was honored by the association in tribute of his 100th birthday.[63][64]
In 1996, a major retrospective at LAA was held to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the gallery. Works by Henry Ward Ranger, Bruce Crane, Robert Vonnoh, Willard Metcalf, Childe Hassam, Carleton Wiggins, Guy C. Wiggins and William Chadwick were featured. Artwork by Ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson was also on display. Also featured was the Goodman Presentation Case, consisting of 35 small works by early Lyme artists, which were originally presented to LAA honorary President William O. Goodman.[65]
In 1997, a footbridge linking Florence Griswold Museum and LAA was built, a project proposed by the museum.[66]
In 2002 LAA held a centennial exhibition to commemorate the first exhibition at the Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library in 1902. 130 early works of 76 of the early members were displayed along with work by current members. During the exhibition, Lieutenant Governor Jodi Rell visited the gallery and declared July 8 "Lyme Art Association Day" to honor the centennial.[67][68] Additionally, LAA featured a retrospective of the work of Deane G. Keller, entitled "Go Figure", concurrent with the Centennial Exhibition.[69]
In 2005, the gallery held a retrospective exhibition of the architect of Lyme Art Association, Charles A. Platt, featuring many of his paintings and etchings.[70]
In 2010, a flood sent two feet of water into the basement of LAA, causing more than $60,000 worth of damage, and the loss of archival material.[71]
In 2014, the widow of artist and teacher Foster Caddell gave a generous gift to LAA's endowment. The south gallery was renamed Caddell Gallery during the 94th Annual Elected Artist Exhibition the following year.[72]
LAA is embarking on a Second Century Campaign, to restore the historic gallery building.[73]
A large collection of Lyme Art Association archives was donated by Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts to the association in 2017. The archival material, from the estate of Elisabeth Gordon Chandler, is to be on permanent display in the Lyme Art Association gallery.[74][75]
In 2018, Laurie Pavlos was named executive director of the organization.[76]
During March 2020, LAA made the decision to cancel the opening reception to "Yin and Yang"[77] show, and close the gallery until the end of the month due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[78] The gallery officially reopened to the public on June 26, 2020 with two new exhibitions.[79]
The Florence Griswold Museum is holding a "Centennial of the Lyme Art Association Gallery" exhibition during 2020 and 2021, commemorating the anniversary of the building of the gallery and the Twentieth Annual Exhibition.[80] Beginning in 2021, Lyme Art Association is embarking on phase two of its Second Century Campaign, to replace the gallery's skylights and laylights, as well as add insulation to the historic structure.[81]
Association presidents
Will S. Taylor (1882-1968), sixth president of Lyme Art Association
↑ Scanlan, Laura Wolff (September–October 2007). "High Thinking and Low Living". Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 28 (5).
↑ "Old Lyme"(PDF). Norwich Bulletin. September 28, 1920.
↑ "A Museum owned by Artists". Museum Work: Including the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums. 4 (1). American Association of Museums: 47. 1921.
↑ "A Museum owned by Artists". Museum Work: Including the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums. 4 (1). American Association of Museums: 47. 1921.
↑ "A Museum owned by Artists". Museum Work: Including the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums. 4 (1). American Association of Museums: 47. 1921.
↑ "A Museum owned by Artists". Museum Work: Including the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums. 4 (1). American Association of Museums: 47. 1921.
↑ Scanlan, Laura Wolff (September–October 2007). "High Thinking and Low Living". Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 28 (5).
Old Lyme is a coastal town in New London County, Connecticut, United States, bounded on the west by the Connecticut River, on the south by the Long Island Sound, on the east by the town of East Lyme, and on the north by the town of Lyme. The town is part of the Lower Connecticut River Valley Planning Region.
Willard Leroy Metcalf was an American painter born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later attended Académie Julian, Paris. After early figure-painting and illustration, he became prominent as a landscape painter. He was one of the Ten American Painters who in 1897 seceded from the Society of American Artists. For some years he was an instructor in the Women's Art School, Cooper Union, New York, and in the Art Students League, New York. In 1893 he became a member of the American Watercolor Society, New York. Generally associated with American Impressionism, he is also remembered for his New England landscapes and involvement with the Old Lyme Art Colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut and his influential years at the Cornish Art Colony.
Florence Ann Griswold was a resident of Old Lyme, Connecticut, United States who became the nucleus of the "Old Lyme Art Colony" in the early 20th century. Her home has since been made into the Florence Griswold Museum, a National Historic Landmark.
Robert Crannell Minor (1839–1904), American artist, was born in New York City on April 30, 1839. His father, Israel Minor, was a merchant who made a large fortune in the pharmaceutical business. As a young man, Robert Minor worked as a bookkeeper in New York City but decided to study art in his early thirties. After studying in New York with painter Alfred Cornelius Howland, Minor went abroad in 1871 to continue his artistic education. He visited various galleries in England before traveling to Barbizon, France, where he studied under Diaz. He later studied in Antwerp under Joseph Van Luppen and Hippolyte Boulenger. In 1874, he was vice president of the Société artistique et littéraire of Antwerp.
Charles Adams Platt was an American architect, garden designer, and artist of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture.
Henry Ward Ranger was an American artist. Born in western New York State, he was a prominent landscape and marine painter, an important Tonalist, and the leader of the Old Lyme Art Colony. Ranger became a National Academician (1906), and a member of the American Water Color Society. Among his paintings are, Top of the Hill, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and East River Idyll, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Florence Griswold Museum is an art museum at 96 Lyme Street in Old Lyme, Connecticut centered on the home of Florence Griswold (1850–1937), which was the center of the Old Lyme Art Colony, a main nexus of American Impressionism. The museum is noted for its collection of American Impressionist paintings. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The site encompasses 12-acres of historic buildings, grounds, gardens, and walking trails.
Edward Charles Volkert (1871–1935) was an American Impressionist artist best known for his colorful and richly painted impressionist landscapes. His trademark subject was that of cattle and plowmen. His style is noted for its impressionist use of light, applied in small dots of paint, while maintaining an interest in the true forms and colors of his subject matter. He has been referred to as America's cattle painter extraordinaire".
Robert Bruce Crane was an American painter. He joined the Lyme Art Colony in the early 1900s. His most active period, though, came after 1920, when for more than a decade he did oil sketches of woods, meadows, and hills. He developed into a Tonalist painter under the influence of Jean-Charles Cazin at Grez-sur-Loing. Crane's mature works were nearly always fall and winter scenes. He usually painted in his studio in Bronxville, New York, where like many of the Tonalists he relied mostly on memories of his outdoor sketching experiences. Selected work can be found at the Florence Griswold Museum and the Newark Museum. He is a descendant of the Continental Congressman Stephen Crane.
Clark Greenwood Voorhees was an American Impressionist and Tonalist landscape painter and one of the founders of the Old Lyme Art Colony.
May Night is a 1906 oil painting by American Impressionist Willard Metcalf. It is a nocturne depicting the home of Florence Griswold, now the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut. It was the first contemporary painting purchased by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and is Metcalf's "most celebrated work."
Matilda Browne was an American Impressionist artist noted for her flower paintings and her farm and cattle scenes. Born in Newark, New Jersey, she was a child prodigy who received early art training from her artist-neighbor, Thomas Moran.
The Old Lyme art colony of Old Lyme, Connecticut was established in 1899 by American painter Henry Ward Ranger, and was in its time the most famous art colony in the United States, and the first to adopt Impressionism.
Allen Butler Talcott was an American landscape painter. After studying art in Paris for three years at Académie Julian, he returned to the United States, becoming one of the first members of the Old Lyme Art Colony in Connecticut. His paintings, usually landscapes depicting the local scenery and often executed en plein air, were generally Barbizon and Tonalist, sometimes incorporating elements of Impressionism. He was especially known and respected for his paintings of trees. After eight summers at Old Lyme, he died there at the age of 41.
Ivan Gregorewitch Olinsky was a Russian Empire-born American painter and art instructor.
Harry Leslie Hoffman (1871–1964) was an American Impressionist painter best known for his brightly colored paintings of underwater marine life.
Edward Francis Rook was an American Impressionist landscape and marine painter, and a member of the art colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut.
Katharine Ludington was an American suffragist. She was the last president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, and a founding leader of the League of Women Voters.
William Chadwick was an American Impressionist painter known for his landscape paintings. In 1884 his family emigrated from England to Holyoke, Massachusetts as his father, Day Chadwick, relocated his woolen goods business to avoid tariffs, opening the Chadwick Plush Company with his uncle John, and 70 imported workers, later renaming the business the Holyoke Plush Company. It was in Holyoke where the young Chadwick would complete his schooling and developed an interest in art. Subsequently, studying under Joseph DeCamp and John Henry Twachtman at the Art Students League of New York, he became a member of the Old Lyme art colony. Although his artwork was not a contemporary commercial success, following his death it found renewed interest nationally in retrospective gallery installations. Today his works may be found in the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut, as well as the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. In addition to their collection holdings, Chadwick's studio remains extant at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, open to visitors from April to October.
Tosca Olinsky (1909–1984) was an American artist known for her realist still life and figure paintings. Critics described her work as conservative and, as one said, falling between the extremes of a meticulous accuracy of illustration, on the one hand, and "the sketchy contrivance of an illusionistic picture", on the other. By temperament neither experimental nor innovative, she adopted a style in which another critic said, "professional competence and good taste" took precedence over "imagination and adventure". A third critic praised her skill in executing works within the narrow range of her choice of subjects and her manner of treating them. Other critics praised her handling of color and her ability to create harmonious designs.
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