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Six Paintings of New England Spring

Artists have probably created far fewer New England spring paintings than of any of the three other seasons. After all, New England has so little spring. The cold gray months morph into mud season and then black fly season. And then, suddenly, it’s the Fourth of July and summer.

And yet New England’s artists have managed to capture what is appealing about the brief New England spring. Maple sugaring. Apple blossoms. Bird’s nests. Brilliant, clear light on sunny days. Romantic moonlit nights.

So here are six paintings of New England spring, one in each state.

New England Spring by Moonlight

May Night by Willard Metcalf. National Gallery of Art.

Willard Metcalf painted May Night, one of his best works, while at the Old Lyme artist colony in Connecticut.

Metcalf was born into a working class family in Lowell, Mass., in 1858. He began painting at 16 and opened a studio in Boston at 18. Early success allowed him to study in Europe for five years.

He then moved around the Northeast, teaching and painting portraits and illustrations. Then he moved to Gloucester, Mass., and devoted himself to landscape painting. His friend Childe Hassam encouraged him to join the Old Lyme artist colony, where he could find high thinking and low living.

May Night depicts the home of Miss Florence Griswold, who founded the Old Lyme colony. In 1907, Metcalf won the Corcoran gold medal for it, along with a $3,000 purchase price. But Old Lyme probably lost its charm for him when his wife ran off with one of his students that year. The painting now belongs to the National Gallery of Art.

Metcalf then spent time at the Cornish Art Colony in New Hampshire, where he painted many landscapes of the changing seasons. One critic called him “the poet laureate of the New England hills.”

The Corcoran Gallery held a major exhibition of his work in 1925, the year he died of a heart attack at age 66.

Spring on a Farm

Spring, by Winslow Homer. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Winslow Homer, born in Boston, Mass., in 1837, learned watercolor at his mother’s knee. He apprenticed to a lithographer for a few years, but hated it. For the next 20 years he illustrated life in Boston and rural New England as well as battlefield scenes during the Civil War.

He then moved to New York, but traveled frequently, painting all the way. In the spring of 1878 he produced 50 watercolors, admired for their fluidity and sparkle. Spring, painted on a farm, is one of them.

Homer eventually grew reclusive around 1880. His family owned an estate on Prout’s Neck in Maine, and Homer moved into the carriage house. He painted the sea in Maine, traveling to the Caribbean during the winter and sometimes to the Adirondacks.

Though he also painted in oil, Winslow Homer knew he’d done something transcendent with his watercolors.

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors,” Homer once said. He hung some of his exquisite watercolors on the walls of the rental cottages. Now they’re in museums or private collections. His 1878 watercolor Spring belongs to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

‘As if the year were all springtime’

Still Life with Robin’s Nest by Fidelia Bridges. Private Collection.

Fidelia Bridges, born in 1834, was one of the very few women artists who could support herself with her work. She only painted birds and plants, which she rendered with exquisite detail and a poetic sensibility.

She ‘paints as if the year were all springtime,’ wrote one critic.

Bridges was often lonely and sad, but her exquisite paintings convey a lyrical joy in the birds and flowers she loved.

Fidelia Bridges was the daughter of a Salem sea captain who plied the China trade. Her parents’ death when she was 15 impoverished her family, but wealthy patrons allowed her to study art in Philadelphia and Europe.

She painted some of her best works in Stratford, Conn., along the Housatonic River. She also sold her work to Louis Prang, who invented the American Christmas card in Boston. For a time she worked as governess for Mark Twain’s children.

Girl on Rock

Spring by Maxfield Parrish. Illustration for Life magazine, 1922 Easter edition

The landscape of Vermont and New Hampshire inspired Maxfield Parrish in 1922 to create lush, romantic paintings like Spring.

Parrish belonged to the Cornish Art Colony from 1898, when he and his wife built a house in Plainfield, N.H. He downplayed his own abilities, calling himself “commonplace” and “a mechanic.”

He used an ancient technique to paint, starting with a monochrome underpainting and then layering transparent glazes. It made him rich and famous. His 1922 painting Daybreak was the most popular art print of the 20^th century, appearing in one out of every four households.

His painting Spring appeared as the Easter cover art for Life magazine April 6, 1922. Parrish then got sick of painting lissome nymphs in outdoor settings. No more girls on rocks, he told the Associated Press in 1931. From then until his death in 1960 he abandoned illustration and painted landscapes.

Apple Trees in a Meadow

Apple Trees in a Meadow by Edward Bannister. High Museum

Edward Bannister stunned the judges of the art competition at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. When he came to receive his gold medal, they were astonished to discover they’d awarded it to an African American.

After winning the prize he prospered as an artist, working out of his studio in Providence, R.I.

Bannister credited his wife, Christiana, with everything he accomplished. She ran several hair salons and told him to devote himself to his painting. Once his paintings started to sell, they spent summers in a cottage on Narragansett Bay. He often painted en plein air.

In 1890, Bannister painted Apple Trees in a Meadow, a familiar sight during the New England spring.

Bannister died in 1901, and his work fell into obscurity. He has since been rediscovered. Apple Trees in a Meadow now belongs to the High Museum in Atlanta.

New England Spring, Vermont Style

American Forest Scene–Maple Sugaring by Arthur Tait

You may well recognize this lithograph as a Currier and Ives, originally sold as a cheap and popular print but now quite collectible.

Nathaniel Currier started off in Boston but eventually moved to New York. Once he hit on the formula of dramatic scenes of newsworthy events, he was on his way. He teamed up with James Merritt Ives and they expanded into scenes of city life, portraits, politics, boats and landscapes.

The firm made prints from the work of the most celebrated artists of the day: Eastman Johnson, George Inness and Thomas Nast. It also employed its own artists, like Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, who specialized in sporting scenes.

New England winter scenes proved especially popular. Snow, however, is not unknown during a New England spring.

Arthur Tait, a British-American artist, painted American Forest Scene—Maple Sugaring. Though he lived in New York, we’re choosing to call this a Vermont scene, as it produces more maple syrup than any other state.

Currier and Ives lasted 72 years before going out of business.

This story updated in 2022.

Images: Spring by Parrish, Plum Leaves via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0; Robin’s Nest (1863, private collection) public domain PD-US.

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The Antis: Women Who Fought Against the Vote

In the late 19^th century, women known as antis began to organize against women who wanted the right to vote.

A cartoon making the antis argument. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The antis viewed suffragists as angry killjoys who wanted to intrude on politics, the proper realm of men. They argued women didn’t need the vote because men could conduct government for both sexes. Further, they contended, the vote alone assssscouldn’t fix any injustice women suffered.

Maine native Kate Douglas Wiggin, who wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, supported the antis. She told a group of women in 1912 she would have ‘woman strong enough to keep just a trifle in the background, for the limelight never makes anything grow.’

As extraordinary as it seems today, the antis got plenty of support from women.

Who Were The Antis?

Suffragists started their first national organization in 1869. It would take the antis another 42 years to form theirs. They called themselves the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, or NAOWS. They passed out pamphlets that preached, ‘you do not need a ballot to clean out your sink.’ One pamphlet included household hints such as cleaning ink spots with sour milk — along with advice to ‘not waste time, energy and money’ on voting.

Other anti-suffrage propaganda pictured men caring for babies and doing household chores while women went off to vote.

The antis had many reasons for opposing the vote. Some with wealth and social prestige feared the vote would dislodge them from their comfortable positions.

Others viewed the suffragists as dangerous radicals associated with birth control, free love and the labor movement.

Some women became antis because they feared electoral politics would erode their ability to do good works. The Progressive Era, for example, got its name from women who tried to solve social problems in clubs, hospitals and settlement houses. They supported prison reform, shorter work days, an end to child labor and improved sanitation and diet.

The antis national organization. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Josephine Jewell Dodge

Josephine Jewell Dodge had wealth and prestige, but she also spent several decades promoting day care centers for working mothers. Dodge was born in 1855 in Hartford to Marshall Jewell, a prominent Connecticut politician who headed the Republican National Committee. She married Arthur Murray Dodge, son of wealthy Congressman William E. Dodge, in 1875.

After rising to prominence for her activism, Josephine Jewell Dodge turned her attention to fighting woman’s suffrage. In 1911, members of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage elected her their first president.

As an anti, she faced accusations that she was a political cats’ paw. The suffragists, who mostly supported temperance, claimed she carried water for the liquor interests.

The suffragists, of course, met the same kind of allegation. The antis charged the suffragists fronted for corrupt male organizations like Tammany Hall.

Both sides used ridicule as a weapon. And as head of NAOWS, Josephine Jewell Dodge confronted the same kind of ridicule the suffragists endured.

Ladies Riot

In 1915, a newspaper reported the antis and the suffragists nearly rioted at a meeting before the National Democratic Committee in Washington, D.C. Josephine Jewell Dodge gave a speech that affronted the suffragists.

“Charges of bribery hurled against Mrs. Dodge met with tears, then a haughty rejoinder — altogether like a men’s political affair except for the smoke,” reported the Washington Herald.

A ‘Western woman’ shook a handful of suffrage leaflets ‘under the nose of the very dignified anti,’ reported the Herald. She shouted that Josephine Jewell Dodge received $75 for delivering her speech.

“Mrs. Dodge flushed angrily and tears filled her eyes,” reported the Herald. “Then she replied in her haughtiest manner:

“As a woman of independent means I not only have never received a cent for my services, but I have financed the work of many others.”

State Chapters of Antis

The antis, just as the suffragists had, began their organizing in Massachusetts, though much later than the suffragists.

An anti-suffrage cartoon showing how the vote would backfire. Courtesy Library of Congress.

In 1895, the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was founded by such Brahmins as Mrs. J. Eliot Cabot, Cornelia Baylis Lowell and Kate Gannett Wells. They attracted nearly 37,000 members by 1915 and had a headquarters on Boylston Street in Boston.

By 1910, the antis spread to other states, including Connecticut.

Mrs. Grace G. Markham, founded the Connecticut Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. It had branches in 161 cities and towns.

Mrs. Markham warned the ‘suffs’ had joined the Reds and wanted to incite class and race hatred.

The fight over woman’s suffrage divided many Connecticut communities, including a prominent artist colony.

In 1914, about 50 suffragists organized the Equal Franchise League in Old Lyme.

Two years earlier, 16 ladies, including art colony founder Florence Griswold, formed Old Lyme’s group of antis. Within a year the antis filled Town Hall for a speaker who denounced the suffragists. Alice Hill Chittendon explained ‘some of the undesirable results of equal suffrage already discovered.’

In January 1919, Mrs. Hermon Hubbard wrote a blistering letter to the New London Day, excoriating the newspaper for supporting the suffrage movement. She called it ‘the most radical and socialistic movement of the day.’ Six months later, she wrote a follow-up letter arguing women should stay home minding their children, ‘not running in the streets.’

New Hampshire Antis

A typical antis argument against the vote.

How did antis respond in 1920 when Tennessee approved the 19^th Amendment, reaching the threshold required to give women the vote?

Some antis refused to vote. But the diary of an Exeter, N.H., teenager shows a typical progression from anti to voter.

New Hampshire antis organized a state chapter of NAOWS, and Exeter formed its own chapter. Effie Tufts, an ardent anti, took her 16-year-old daughter Helen to hear two antis speak at Town Hall in 1913.

Helen reported in her diary that the meeting was ‘very good,’ and she had decided, “I’m an anti.”

In 1919, Helen’s father, state Sen. James Tufts, voted against the 19^th Amendment .

“Father fought it, spoke etc, but N.H. passed the suffrage amendment 18 to 10,” wrote Helen Tufts. “Worse Luck!”

She changed her tune in 1920, when at 23 she could vote for the first time.

“Mrs. Illsley came at — and took Mother and me down to VOTE!!! My first X ever put on a ballot was for Father for State Senator.”

With thanks to the Exeter Historical Society and the Florence Griswold Museum. This story about the antis was updated in 2022.

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Six Autumn Paintings of New England (And How They Look Today)

New England’s fall foliage inspires so much imagery we were pretty sure we could find six autumn paintings of New England. Then we thought we could identify each location and find a current photo, with help from Google Maps, Wikipedia and our own archives.

Sure enough, we found a painting of an identifiable scene in each New England state – all beautiful, of course, and all of autumn. We even found photos of the subjects of some of the six autumn paintings from the artist’s vantage point.

Here then are six autumn paintings of New England, one for each state.

Old Lyme, Connecticut

Reflections of Old Lyme by Guy Wiggins

We naturally turned to the village of Old Lyme in New London to find an autumn landscape painting.

Old Lyme was the site of an artist colony, arguably the largest and most important in the United States for 20 years from about 1900. It started when Florence Griswold and her sister Adele fell on hard times, as had New London. The Griswold sisters began to rent rooms to boarders in their family’s old Georgian home. When New York artists learned about the picturesque seaside town, they flocked to Miss Florence’s art colony.

Guy Wiggins, who painted Reflections of Old Lyme, was one of the youngest members of the Old Lyme art colony. He painted with his father, Carleton Wiggins, also a landscape artist. Guy Wiggins was better known for his paintings of New York skyscrapers in winter.

The painting was in the archives of the Caldwell Gallery in Hudson, N.Y.

Today, the Old Lyme Art Colony lives on as the Florence Griswold Museum (open from May through October), and Old Lyme has regained its prosperity.

Old Lyme today, courtesy Google Maps.

Mount Katahdin

Mount Katahdin by Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley, born in 1877 in Lewiston, Maine, was a renowned Modernist artist who painted manly, rugged scenes of fishermen, mountains and rocky seashores. He often painted Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain in Baxter State Park.

He moved to New York to embrace Greenwich Village Bohemianism, then in 1901 began a pattern he would repeat throughout his life: He left New York for Maine for the first of many summers. Hartley would forever bounce between the city and the country, tiring of one, then the other. In 1937, after a long stint in Europe, he returned to Lewiston, declaring he wanted to become ‘the painter of Maine.’

He made no money and almost abandoned art at the age of 29. Then he got a job as a handyman as a utopian community in Eliot, Maine, and continued to paint. He decided to continue as an artist after he put on a successful one-man show at the home of one of the community members.

Mount Katahdin

Marlborough Street, Boston

Frederick Childe Hassam, a New Englander through and through, painted many landscapes of the region throughout his life. Born in the Dorchester section of Boston in 1859, he was related to Nathaniel Hawthorne on his mother’s side.

Despite an uncle’s offer to send him to Harvard, Hassam dropped out of high school at 17 and got a job at Little, Brown & Co. He then worked as an engraver and an illustrator, until 1893 when he had his first solo exhibition of watercolors. The next year, his friend Celia Thaxter convinced him to stop calling himself ‘Fred’ and use his middle name instead. Hassam often painted the Isles of Shoals when he visited Thaxter at her salon there.

Starting in the mid-1890s, Hassam painted in Massachusetts in Gloucester and Provincetown, and at Connecticut art colonies in Cos Cob and Old Lyme.

He married Kathleen Maud Doane in 1882 and moved to Boston’s then-tony South End. Hassam began painting Boston cityscapes – an unorthodox choice at the time.

Later, Hassam painted cityscapes in Paris and New York. He died in 1935, and for years he was considered one of the abandoned geniuses of American Impressionism. He was rediscovered in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and his paintings sold for millions.

Marlborough Street in 2017

Mount Washington

Autumn in the Conway Meadows Looking Towards Mount Washington by Albert Bierstadt

More than 400 artists painted landscapes of the White Mountains of New Hampshire beginning at the turn of the 19th century. They wanted to promote the region and sell their paintings. It worked. Their dramatic images of a mountain wilderness attracted tourists from northeastern cities, especially in the summertime.

Albert Bierstadt was known for his paintings of the American West and considered a member of the Hudson River School. He was born in Germany in 1833, but his family moved to New Bedford in 1850. He studied art in Boston, and developed an interest in topography. It was natural for him to be drawn to Mount Washington, the tallest mountain on the East Coast.

Bierstadt studied painting in Germany for several years before returning to New Bedford. He painted Autumn in the Conway Meadows Looking Towards Mount Washington in 1858 just as he was getting noticed as an artist. The next year he headed west. There he was inspired to paint the large landscapes that gained him enormous popularity.

Mount Washington today. Not much has changed.

Sakonnet Point, R.I.

A Breezy Day: Sakonnet Point, Rhode Island, by Thomas Worthington Whittredge, courtesy Amon Carter Museum

The Great Hurricane of 1938 destroyed nearly all the buildings in the seaside village of Sakonnet Point in Little Compton, R.I.

Thomas Worthington Whittredge got there many years beforehand. Like his friend Albert Bierstadt, he was a member of the Hudson River School of Art. Like Bierstadt, he was famous for his paintings of the West.

Whittredge was born in 1820 in Ohio, and studied painting in Europe with Emmanuel Leutze. Leutze used Whittredge as a model for George Washington and his steersman in his iconic painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware.

Worthington Whittredge painted A Breezy Day–Sakonnet Point, Rhode Island, sometime around 1880. Four years later, Sakonnet Light was built. Preservationists made sure the historic lighthouse is still there.

Sakonnet Point. July 2012. Image courtesy Google Maps.

Bob Slater’s Hill, South Royalton, Vt.

Bob Slater’s Hill by Edward Hopper, courtesy Huntington Museum of Art

From the time he was 29 in 1912, Edward Hopper spent nearly every summer in New England until his death in 1967.

He is mostly associated with Cape Cod, Boston’s North Shore and New York City, but he spent some little-known time in and around South Royalton, Vt. He visited first in 1927 and then in the latter 1930s.

Hopper painted two dozen known works of Vermont, all watercolors and mostly ignored until rediscovered and assembled in an exhibit recently. Many of the scenes he painted then haven’t changed much.

Wagon Wheels Farm, July 2019. Image courtesy Google Maps.

There is actually a book and an entire blog devoted to Finding Edward Hopper in Vermont, both by Bonnie Tocher Clause. Of the painting Bob Slater’s Hill, she writes,

From the window of the upstairs guest room on Wagon Wheels Farm, Edward and Jo Hopper looked out over another South Royalton hill — Jigger Hill, or “Bob Slater’s Hill,” as Edward dubbed it. He recorded his fascination with the changing light and shadows in a watercolor, a striking study of contrasting views, near and far… In Bob Slater’s Hill and others of the Vermont watercolors, Hopper captured the particular shade of yellowish-green that’s a harbinger of fall in Vermont.

It isn’t clear to us which hill is “Bob Slater”s” or “Jigger” Hill. But today a historical marker stands in front of the old farm, with the message, “Tourists Accommodated 1937-1942.” It notes that the Hoppers stayed there, as well as Eleanor Roosevelt (not at the same time).

Image of Mount Katahdin By TJ aka Teej – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1091663. This story was updated in 2021.

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Childe Hassam Paints What He Sees (And Oh, What He Saw)

Childe Hassam liked to paint without his shirt on, and sometimes beat his chest while at work. He was fun, energetic and self-assured, and when he started going to Florence Griswold’s house in Old Lyme, Conn., other artists followed.

Boston Common at Twilight by Childe Hassam, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Hassam called the Old Lyme artists colony ‘just the place for high thinking and low living.’ Archaelogists later found a stash of beer, wine and whiskey bottles beneath the ruins of his studio.

He had a dark complexion and heavy-lidded eyes, and many people mistook him for a Middle Easterner – a mistake he enjoyed promulgating. He took to painting an Islamic-looking moon next to his signature, which evolved into a slash.

Mount Vernon Street, by Childe Hassam.

Childe Hassam

Frederick Childe Hassam was born in the Dorchester section of Boston on Oct. 17, 1859. He was related to Nathaniel Hawthorne on his mother’s side.

As a boy, he once claimed, he could swim across Dorchester Bay and knock out any of the other boys with his fists. His father’s cutlery business was wiped out in the Great Boston Fire of 1872.

Despite an uncle’s offer to send him to Harvard, Hassam dropped out of high school at 17 and got a job at Little, Brown & Co. He later got worked as an engraver after studying wood engraving on the side.

Illustration for Scribner’s by Childe Hassam

In 1882 he became a freelance illustrator, while taking drawing classes at the Lowell Institute (a division of MIT) and at the Boston Art Club, He contributed illustrations to Harper’s and Scribner’s magazines.

Celia Thaxter’s Garden, by Childe Hassam. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1893, he had his first solo exhibition of watercolors. The next year, his friend Celia Thaxter convinced him to stop calling himself ‘Fred’ and use his middle name instead. Childe Hassam visited Thaxter at her summer salon on Appledore Island in the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. He often painted on the islands and illustrated her book, An Island Garden.

Church at Old Lyme by Childe Hassam. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.

Starting in the mid-1890s, Hassam painted in Gloucester, Mass., Provincetown, Cos Cob and at the Old Lyme Art Colony in Connecticut.

Historical Painter?

Unlike contemporary artists who painted historical subjects, Hassam and his circle painted what they saw. In an 1892 magazine interview, Hassam said,

Hitherto historical painting has been considered the highest branch of the art. A true historical painter, it seems to me, is one who paints the life he sees about him, and so makes a record of his own epoch.

A Rainy Day in Boston, by Childe Hassam.

He married Kathleen Maud Doane in 1882 and moved to Boston’s then-tony South End. He began painting Boston cityscapes – an unorthodox choice.

Couch on the Porch by Childe Hassam

They moved to Paris in 1886 so Hassam could study figure painting. He rented Auguste Renoir’s former studio, which was littered with his unsold paintings. Hassam realized Renoir’s experiments in pure color and realized it was what he was trying to do himself.

The Hassams returned to America in 1889, settling in New York City. There, Hassam became the ‘painter of the avenue,’ taking his easel to the streets near a succession of studios he rented on or near Fifth Avenue. He knew how to market his work, and painted the wealthy people likely to buy his paintings.

Summer Evening by Childe Hassam. Florence Griswold Museum.

Hassam resisted labels, including Impressionist, which he and his friends John Twachtman and J. Alden Weir helped bring to America.

The Ten

In 1897, Hassam, Weir and Twachtman formed a group of contemporary artists from Boston and New York. Known as ‘The Ten,’ they exhibited together. Between 1898 and 1919, Hassam exhibited in every one of the group’s annual shows. Over his lifetime, he produced more than 2,000 paintings and 400 prints.

By 1913, when modernism came to New York at the Armory Show, Childe Hassam was no longer an artistic rebel. He pooh-poohed surrealists and cubists, calling them ‘art boobies.’ He and Weir in turn were called ‘the mammoth and mastodon of art.’

The Fourth of July by Childe Hassam

An outburst of patriotism during World War I inspired Hassam’s memorable flag paintings.

One, Flags, Fifth Avenue, was a favorite of socialite Brooke Astor. Her estranged son sold it from under her to a private collector though she intended to will it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1919, the Hassams moved to East Hampton on Long Island, where he continued to paint and to sell his paintings. Critics dismissed him, and he crankily responded by calling them dolts, asses and dullards.

Childe Hassam died on Aug. 27, 1935. For years he was considered one of the abandoned geniuses of American Impressionism. Collectors rediscovered him in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and his paintings sold for millions.

A critic named Elisabeth Luther Cary wrote, “Childe Hassam has gone and with him something irreplaceable has left American art. I know of no other painter with his power to make the world look convincingly joyous with its own joy, and this he seemed always able to do.”

If you enjoyed this story, you might like to read about another New England artist, Fidelia Bridges, here. This story was updated in 2022.

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Albert Einstein Summers in Rhode Island, Connecticut

Even the greatest minds need a rest now and then, and in the 1930s Albert Einstein rested his in New England, spending several summers in Watch Hill, R.I., and at least one in Old Lyme, Conn.

Einstein, the legendary physicist who gave the world the theory of relativity, liked to relax playing the piano and violin, and sailing. And he loved summertime.

Einstein was wildly famous and easily identified in America, where he came to avoid persecution in his native Germany. As Hitler had intensified his persecution of Jews, the Nazis had seized Einstein’s home, turning it into an Aryan youth camp. They stole and sold his sailboat and burned his books.

Though he didn’t know how to swim, Einstein continued his sailing in exile in New England and New York. He couldn’t sail too well, and locals often had to fish him out of the water.

Albert Einstein sailing in New York. (Photo from Cornell Library.)

Einstein on the Water

In the summers of 1933 and 1934 he was a regular sight sailing a 22-footer in Watch Hill. And his sailing around the waters of Connecticut were legendary. With his wild hair and easily recognizable features, people couldn’t help but notice when he landed on a sandbar. He often ran aground, according to his biographers, lost direction or collided with other vessels.

He once ran aground off Old Saybrook in the summer of 1935. Newspapers had a field day. The New York Times ran a headline: “Relative Tide And Sand Bars Trap Einstein.” Another newspaper put it this way: “Einstein’s Miscalculation Leaves Him Stuck On Bar Of Lower Connecticut River.”

During his New England vacations he also would often would meet with other scientists and debate principles of advanced mathematics and physics in the cool summer evenings. He always took a pencil and pad with him on his sailboat, so he could write down his thoughts if the wind died.

His thoughts, however, also strayed to his lost homeland. He kept careful note of the schedule of Hitler’s speeches so he could listen to them on the radio while watching the waves from his Watch Hill cottage.

And on Dry Land

While staying in Old Lyme, someone recommended that Einstein visit Gillette Castle. He was said to have enjoyed Gillette’s miniature three-mile railroad. No danger of running aground there.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Matilda Browne, Just One of the Boy Artists

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.

Peonies, by Matilda Browne

The Old Lyme Art Colony, the most famous collection of artists in its day, mostly included men. Raucous Bohemians, they did not think much of women artists.

Matilda Browne was an exception — the only woman allowed to paint on one of the celebrated panels inside Miss Florence’s Georgian mansion. She was also the only woman portrayed in a mural painted by Henry Rankin Poore on the overmantle in the 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.

Matilda Browne at 25

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 nine-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, 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 the painting, she traded the calf for another.

In New York she studied with Carleton Wiggins. He not only painted livestock, but probably introduced her to the high-thinking, low-living summer art colony in Old Lyme, Conn. The Old Lyme art colony played an important role in incubating American Impressionism.

Acceptance

Matilda arrived in 1905, and the male artists immediately accepted her. But they disdained the young female art students they called ‘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.

Inn the Garden by Matilda Browne

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.

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.

This story was updated in 2022.

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