Art Colony Dining Room

The tradition of painting on the doors of the boardinghouse reached a crescendo in the dining room. The artist Willard Metcalf suggested decorating the dining room with painted panels held in place by varnished strapping. The 44 panels by 33 artists cover the four walls. The panels are sandwiched between the wainscot below and a china rail above, displaying Miss Florence’s collection of antique ceramics. The subject matter of the panels mirrors the interests of the painters of the colony and includes Lyme landscapes, bucolic rural scenes, woodland interiors, and a few exotic images of the Far East, Venice, Spain, and New York. 

“But there is more even than food and stories in that dining-room. Its paneled walls and doors are gay with paintings representing the work of the various artists who, at one time and another, dwelt beneath that hospitable roof. Visitors to Lyme make adoring pilgrimages to Miss Florence’s house to see these walls and the painted doors throughout the fine old mansion.”

~ Journalist Alice Lawton, American Motorists, 1928

A favored room of the artists, the dining room has a low ceiling, wide-plank floorboards, and large brick fireplace that suggested a connection to colonial America. Women and men often sat at separate tables. Miss Florence would move from one table to the other enjoying, and perhaps instigating, the animated conversations at both. Often the artist William Henry Howe, who was famous for his paintings of cows, would be asked to carve at table because of his great knowledge of animal anatomy. Overall, meals were simple (roast beef, turkey, ham) but substantial and often included fresh vegetables from Miss Florence’s garden and fruit from the orchard baked into pies.

“The room is paneled and every square inch of paneling, even the doors, has been used by the painters to make quick impressions of the river, or the clouds, or a bit of laurel.”

~ Travel Writer Clara Walker Whiteside, 1926

Over the fireplace is The Fox Chase, a painted parody of the hunting scenes depicted in the English prints above, peopled with artists associated with the Lyme Art Colony during its first five years (the colony continued in some form until Miss Florence’s death in 1937). Shown running through the village from the Griswold House to the marshes beyond the First Congregational Church, the members of the colony are playfully identified through their foibles and idiosyncrasies. The rotund Henry Ward Ranger, dressed in tell-tale browns like those in his pictures holds his heart at one end of the frieze-like composition, while Childe Hassam, stripped naked from the waist up, paints en plein air, or outdoors in the manner of the Impressionists, at the other. Between the two rivals are the artists who came to Lyme during those early years to forge a new chapter in American art history. The good-natured air and self-mocking fun of the painting reveals the camaraderie of the art colony, which was as Hassam liked to say, “just the place for high thinking and low living!”

Learn more about the inside of the Griswold boardinghouse by clicking the choices below:

• Overview
• Bedroom
• Center Hall
• Colony Parlor
• Miss Florence's Bedroom
• Pantry / Back Hall
• Dining Room