Peonies, ca. 1907
Oil on wood Original Carrig-Rohane frame 1907
Florence Griswold Museum Purchase 2013.11

This recent addition to the Museum’s collection embodies the essence of plein-air painting. Matilda Browne captures the glorious sunshine and lush color of a June day, when the peonies bloomed in profusion in Old Lyme. The painting is thought to depict the garden of Katharine Ludington, down the street from Florence Griswold’s boardinghouse. While some Impressionists may have preferred to work on a white ground, Browne nonetheless achieves brilliant sunlit effects against the brown wood of a panel.

Browne likely selected a wood panel as her support because it could stand up to the rigors of outdoor sketching, which included wind and uneven terrain. Wood panels could be propped inside a sketchbox or clamped to a folding easel, all parts of the plein-air painter’s kit. The painting retains its original frame, carved by Hermann Dudley Murphy, who signed the back. Murphy and his partners in Boston introduced handcrafted art frames to America as an antidote to commercially available frames.