Florence Griswold – Florence Griswold Museum

“At first the artists adopted Lyme, then Lyme adopted the artists, and now, today, Lyme and art are synonymous.”
– Florence Griswold, 1937

 

Thanks in large measure to “Miss Florence” Griswold (1850-1937), what is known today as the Florence Griswold Museum has, for more than a century, been the home of the Lyme Art Colony in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Florence Ann Griswold was born on Christmas Day, 1850 to Robert and Helen Griswold of Old Lyme, Connecticut. “I was never more pleasantly disappointed,” wrote Helen, announcing the new arrival to the father, who was sailing the Atlantic. Helen may have been especially aware of the limited opportunities that her era offered women. Had she known what was to become of her new daughter, she would surely have been amazed.

Florence had a distinguished ancestry. She was a descendant of two governors of Connecticut, including her grandfather, who was also a U.S. Congressman and a Connecticut Supreme Court judge. Her immediate family, however, were considered the “poor relations” of the large and wealthy Griswold clan.

Robert’s life as a ship’s captain began well, but by 1855 he became weary of the hardships of sailing boats family shipping line out of New York to the West Indies and China and retired. Robert chose to invest heavily in an ox-and-horseshoe factory in Old Lyme, but it failed in the 1860s, and his family struggled financially from that time on. By 1877 Robert was not only in poor health but also had three mortgages on the family home. His death in 1882 left them in a genteel poverty that continued to plague his family.

Despite the family’s misfortune, Florence and her two older sisters received the education of socially elite young women. They attended a private finishing school, where they studied music, painting, the needle arts, and foreign languages. Florence became fluent in French and proficient in piano, harp, and guitar, and she was skilled at English-style horseback riding. Such an education was intended to make a young woman eligible for a suitable marriage, but none of the Griswold sisters married.

In 1878 Helen and her daughters opened a girls’ school in their home, which ran with modest success until about 1892, with offerings that at times included English, history, French, German, Latin, Greek, the “higher mathematics,” music, art, and “the rich and elegant styles of French embroidery, ancient and modern, not elsewhere taught in this country.” By 1891 a close friend believed that their only income was from a few seasonal boarders and lessons in piano and needlework. Matters grew worse after the passing of her sisters and her mother by 1900. Florence was the only one left to take care of her family home.

 

In 1898 Florence Griswold placed ads in a local newspaper, looking to sell (and deliver) pansy and rose plants she propagated in her garden. Even so slight a business venture stretched the limits of the domestic sphere that highbred females were bound by. The boldness of her action suggests she was strong and self-reliant, but artist Arthur Heming, who boarded with her in the early 1900s, said she was neither. Nor was she, by other accounts, always sensible. Florence Griswold was, nonetheless, destined to run a famous boardinghouse for artists. Artist Henry Ward Ranger discovered Old Lyme and the Griswold house in 1899 and returned with friends the following spring to create a Barbizon-oriented art colony. After Childe Hassam arrived in 1903, it would become the largest and best-known Impressionist art colony in America. Florence Griswold was a major force in making it all happen.

Miss Florence was extraordinarily kind and catered joyfully to the needs of her boarders, friends, visitors, and the countless stray cats that flocked to her home. She charged such low rent that often she could not pay her own bills and also acquired additional mortgages on her home to keep things moving. Her unfailing optimism endeared “Miss Florence” to the artists. She became their friend and confidant. Her sunny outlook never wavered, even as financial troubles multiplied.

[Grateful for her hospitality, the artists painted on the walls and doors of the house. This unique collection is preserved within the Florence Griswold House today, making the building itself one of the most important aspects of the collection.]

She packed and shipped paintings and other belongings that “her boys,” as she called them, left behind. She divided her attic into bedrooms, converted outbuildings into studios, and organized entertainment.

A woman who ran a busy boardinghouse, aggressively sold paintings out of her front hallway, and took an active part in her town’s affairs might be expected to favor women’s rights, but Florence Griswold did not fit the stereotype of a suffragette and did not support them. Like these feminist “New Women,” she had defied precepts that restricted women of her class to a domain of genteel domesticity, but circumstances, not modern ideas, had shaped her life. She may have feared that suffrage would spoil the apolitical, behind-the-scenes power that such traditionally “feminine” women believed they had. Florence Griswold—energetic, aggressive, and unconventional, but also refined, domestic, and happily compliant— combined elements of both.

In old age, she managed the new Lyme Art Association gallery next to her house, yet her final years were filled with money concerns which became overwhelming, even though friends and relatives intervened. The Florence Griswold Association was formed in 1936 and helped her to stay in her home, where she died in 1937 at the age of 86. Her New York Times obituary read, “In her delicate and high-bred way, Miss Florence had her part in fostering an authentic American art.”

–Adapted from an online essay by independent scholar and curator Hildegard Cummings. Read more about Miss Florence and the Lyme Art Colony artists at FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org.

The Florence Griswold Museum is located at 96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, Connecticut. For hours, directions, and more information on this museum and its exhibitions, visit www.florencegriswoldmuseum.org.