YouTube – Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame
The Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame pays tribute to Florence Griswold, an Old Lyme native who fostered the impressionist art movement in Connecticut. Griswold opened her home to summer borders and in 1899 hosted the renowned landscape painter Henry Ward Ranger. The painter rapidly became enamored with the prospect of developing an artist colony in Old Lyme. Shortly after, Florence Griswold’s house began attracting a new generation of leading American painters—artists such as Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Will Howe Foote, and William Chadwick. These artists were in the vanguard of the impressionist movement and together formed the Lyme Art Colony, helping turn it into one of America’s most celebrated centers for impressionism.
