‘The Artist’s Garden’ At FloGris Part Of Old Lyme’s Midsummer Festival

Artists love gardens, painter Anna Lea Merritt wrote, because gardens “produce pictures without brushes.” This ethos fit from 1887 to 1920, when a Garden Movement swept the nation, urging governments and citizens to create gardens to soften the shocks of a changing world.

An exhibit at Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme celebrates artists’ embrace of both gardening and painting their gardens. Many of the artists were women. This reflects an era when women were segueing into professional lives by capitalizing on their skills.

“The imagery of the garden was associated with femininity. Women felt empowered as workers, designers, caretakers. It was an easier transition to be assertive in this feminine environment,” says assistant curator Jenny Parsons.

A stunning oil-on-board by Violet Oakley shows two women tending to a bush full of white roses. Jane Peterson’s “Spring Bouquet” is charming, an image of a fashionably dressed World War II-era woman strolling through her garden. Matilda Browne painted the garden at the Old Lyme home of fellow artist Clark Voorhees, with a funny duck topiary in the front yard.

Stained glass was a way to bring gardens inside the house, by replacing unwanted views with fantasy views of colorful flowers. John LaFarge depicted hollyhocks and morning glories in glass, and Louis Comfort Tiffany created a vision of peonies. Maurice Prendergast’s “Promenade” depicts a public park filled with women enjoying the gardens, and Philip Leslie Hale painted a woman in white and a blood-red sash sitting on a white porch, with a bush full of blood-red flowers in the foreground.

Visitors to the FloGris will have the chance to see the museum’s own gardens at Old Lyme’s Midsummer Festival. A concert will be held to start the festival on Friday, July 29, at 7 p.m. at the museum, with Braiden Sunshine and his band, Silver Hammer. On Saturday, July 30, the festival fans out across Lyme Street, with art exhibits and sales, music performances, a fashion show and other activities, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. OldLymeMidsummerFestival.com.

THE ARTISTS’ GARDEN: AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM AND THE GARDEN MOVEMENT will be at the Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St. in Old Lyme, until Sept. 18. flogris.org