Florence Griswold Museum | Home of American Impressionism

The house gives one a feeling for the artist’s life at the turn-of-the century in a way unlike any museum I’ve visited before. I particularly liked the painted panels scattered throughout the house, most notably in the dining room.

Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve University

So you see, at first the artists adopted Lyme, then Lyme adopted the artists, and now, today, Lyme and art are synonymous.

Florence Griswold, 1937
I want you to see a little of this beautiful country, where pictures are made – your station is Lyme.

Henry Ward Ranger, 1899
We are up here in another old corner of Connecticut and it is very much like your country. There are some very large oaks and chestnuts and many fine hedges. Lyme, or Old Lyme as it is usually called, is at the mouth of the Connecticut River and it really is a pretty fine old town.

Childe Hassam, 1903
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.

A Visitor to Lyme, 1876
It looks like Barbizon, the land of Millet. See the knarled [sic] oaks, the low rolling country. This land has been farmed and cultivated by men, and then allowed to revert back into the arms of mother nature. It is only waiting to be painted.

Henry Ward Ranger, 1900

Flora/FaunaThe Naturalist Impulse in American Art