Matilda Browne, The Only Woman Artist Allowed to Paint the Doors of the Old Lyme Colony

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Matilda Browne won so much respect from her fellow artists they let her paint on a door in Miss Florence Griswold’s house in Old Lyme, Conn.

And that was a very big deal.

The Old Lyme Art Colony was the largest and most influential summer art colony in the United States from about 1900-1930. Centered in “Miss Florence” Griswold’s Georgian boarding house, it played a pivotal role in shaping American art by championing Impressionism. The art colony also transformed a small Connecticut town into the “American Giverny.”

The Old Lyme artists mostly included raucous Bohemian men who prided themselves on “high thinking and low living.” They liked to drink and fish and play practical jokes on each other.  They did not think much of women artists.

Matilda Browne was an exception, the only woman portrayed in a mural painted by Henry Rankin Poore on the overmantle in Miss Florence’s house. Called The Fox Chase, it caricatured 23 of the Old Lyme artists chasing after a fox. Poore depicted Matilda Browne with her arms raised in shock at the sight of Childe Hassam painting shirtless en plein air.

A Good Neighbor

Matilda Browne was born May 8, 1869 in Newark, N.J.  Her family lived next door to Thomas Moran, an acclaimed Hudson River School painter.  Moran let 9-year-old Matilda visit him while he worked in his studio. Soon he let her experiment with his paint and canvas.

She impressed Moran with her talent and he encouraged her to take art lessons.  At 12, the National Academy of Design in New York accepted one of her flower paintings for an exhibition.

She loved to paint flowers and animals, especially ox-teams, horses, dairy cows and sheep.  Her mother took her to Europe in 1889 to study with French and Dutch artists who specialized in painting animals. Her mother also bought calves from the local agricultural fair for Matilda to paint. When she finished a painting, she would trade the calf for another.

In New York she studied with Carleton Wiggins. He not only painted livestock, but probably introduced her to the Old Lyme art colony.

Acceptance

The male artists at Old Lyme disdained the young female art students who came to Old Lyme, calling them “blots on the landscape.” One of the Old Lyme artists, Willard Metcalf, painted an image of one of his young women students and called it Poor Little Bloticelli.

But by the time Matilda Browne reached Old Lyme, she was the artistic equal of the men who boarded there over the summer. She had won a number of awards and, as one critic wrote,  “she often wields her brush with almost masculine vigor.”  She was also stout, serious and a little lame, which probably inspired the men to treat her like a sister.  They accepted her as one of their own.

Miss Florence let her artist-boarders paint on the interior doors and panels of her home. This was considered a great honor, one accorded to Matilda Browne.

Her subject for the door panels? A pair of calves grazing peaceably.

Matilda Browne returned to Old Lyme periodically between 1911 and 1924.  She also painted in Greenwich, Conn., at the Cos Cob Art Colony, and in New York City.  Around 1918 she married writer Frederick van Wyck. She died in Greenwich on Nov. 3, 1947.

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This story was updated in 2025.  Images: “An Unwilling Momdel” By Evekahn – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=137403813.