The sitter, Mary Lightfoot Tarleton Knollenberg, was an American sculptor. She already was gaining notice by the mid-1930s and awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933. Her career would center on modern, pared-down figures and animals, often shaped by direct carving and a searching psychological presence. Guy Pène du Bois, an American painter and influential art critic, was known for pointed observations of modern life. Here, he turns that perceptive eye inward. Set among books, Knollenberg is less as a social type than as a working artist. She is poised, self-contained, and caught in the quiet tension between public ambition and private interior life. The American artist depicts her as a light-skinned woman sitting angled on a dark sofa, her posture steady but alert. She wears a short-sleeved, V-neck blouse in warm yellow and a deep teal-blue scarf looped around her shoulders. A green skirt pools over her knees. Her blonde hair is waved close to the head, and her face is modeled with cool shadow plus rosy cheeks, pale brow, and red lips set in a restrained line. She looks off to our left rather than meeting our gaze, as if listening to someone just outside the frame. One hand rests on her lap, fingers relaxed while the other braces lightly on the seat edge. Behind her, a pale bookcase holds rows of upright, color-banded spines and a few stacked volumes, creating a quiet rhythm of rectangles. At the left edge, a patterned blanket and a partial framed picture set the calm in a private and intellectual room. The paint surface is smooth in her face and hands, with broader, more matte strokes in the clothing and background. The limited palette of yellow, blue, and green sets her figure forward against soft grays and mint tones, while the bookshelf’s tidy order contrasts with the sitter’s slightly turned shoulders and distant focus. The overall effect is of a composed woman caught mid-thought … present in her body, elsewhere in her mind.

“Mary Lightfoot Tarleton Knollenberg” by Guy Pène du Bois (American) - Oil on canvas / 1935 - Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme, Connecticut) #WomenInArt #GuyPeneDuBois #DuBois #GuyPèneDuBois #art #FlorenceGriswoldMuseum #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #AmericanArtist #AmericanArt

American artist Frederick Childe Hassam created “Summer Evening” the year he first visited Appledore Island in the Isles of Shoals, a resort off the coast of Maine presided over by gardener and poet Celia Laighton Thaxter. In this painting, possibly completed there, a fair-skinned woman with dark brown hair pulled back sits in profile, her gaze directed out the window. She is wearing an off-white loose-fitting dress, which drapes softly around her. Her posture suggests a quiet stillness, possibly introspection as she angles her body away into the shadows while vibrant red geraniums in a terracotta pot on the windowsill beside the woman lean towards the sun. The woman's hand gently touches the plant, creating a subtle connection between her and the natural world outside. The interior of the room is depicted with a muted palette of greens and browns. A section of a light-colored curtain is visible to the woman's right, suggesting a private space. The wall is painted a subtle, mottled green. The painting conveys a sense of tranquility and solitude, with the woman's quiet contemplation emphasized by the expansive exterior landscape and the simple yet beautiful details of the interior setting. The contrast between the vibrant geraniums and the muted colors of the room and landscape adds to the emotional depth of the work. Painting in Cos Cob, Old Lyme, and New York, Hassam would return many times to the theme of a woman near a window contemplating her relationship to the outside world. The same year he completed “Summer Evening,” Hassam went to Paris, France to study. There, he absorbed the style of artists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, though he never had direct contact with any of the French Impressionists. When he returned to the United States he roamed up the east coast visiting different artists’ colonies and enclaves, spreading the Impressionist style.

Summer Evening by Frederick Childe Hassam (American) - Oil on canvas / 1886 - Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme, Connecticut) #womeninart #art #ArtText #oilpainting #artwork #womensart #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist #Summer #fineart #FrederickChildeHassam #ChildeHassam #FlorenceGriswoldMuseum

Just installed a new work at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT. Check it out if you are in the area. #felandusthames #flogrismuseum #florencegriswoldmuseum #blackart #visitnewengland

A mini Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz made out of recycled glass. Can be found in Connecticut at the Florence Griswold Museum

I haven't seen it in person, but Pinterest was showing me some ways to recycle & make art.
💚👠♻️
#FlorenceGriswoldMuseum
#OldLyme #Connecticut
#recycle #art #WizardOfOz

Ammi Phillips, a native of Colebrook, Connecticut, is now considered one of America’s premier nineteenth-century folk painters. However, for several decades after his death his identity was unknown. Phillips, like many folk artists, did not sign many of his works. For years he was referred to as the Kent Limner or Border Limner, for the regions he worked in that encompassed northwestern Connecticut and into Massachusetts and New York. The discovery of a signed portrait in 1958 revealed his identity and led to the attribution of about 500 paintings. This portrait probably dates from the early 1820s, when Phillips was modeling faces with an uncompromising realism. His work of this period was also characterized by his sitters’ dark clothes and backgrounds highlighted with a few striking decorations, such as the fancy gauze bonnet that so smartly sets off Mrs. Hickok’s sharp features and earnest gaze. He painted at least two other women wearing the same bonnet. His work was featured on a United States postage stamp in 1998.

Portrait of Katherine Salisbury Newkirk Hickok by Ammi Phillips (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1825 - Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme, Connecticut) #womeninart #portrait #oilpainting #portraitofawoman #FlorenceGriswoldMuseum #AmmiPhillips #AmericanArt #womensart #AmericanArtist #LymeArtColony