A Mood of Spring, ca. 1913
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. John Hoffman and Family 2003.8

A Mood of Spring dates from one of the most successful periods in Harry Hoffman’s career. The work earned him a Gold Medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco in 1915. Hoffman trained with Frank Vincent DuMond, who ran the Lyme Summer School of Art, as well as teaching at the Art Students League in New York. After his student days in Lyme, Hoffman departed for Europe but eventually returned to become a full-fledged member of the Lyme Art Colony.

The home pictured is that of the Harding Family who lived on Sill Lane in Old Lyme quite near the Hoffmans’ home “Chuluota,” a Native America word for “beautiful view.” Like his friend Henry C. White, Hoffman explicitly seeks to convey the mood of the landscape here. “I don’t want to be a stylist,” Hoffman wrote, “I want to paint things as they seem to me. I want to record my own impressions and not be bound by style.”