S unny north light streams into the small wooden studio built high on New England’s rocky landscape. Paintbrushes, canvases, and sketchbooks still clutter the artist’s work space. The acrid smell of oil paint pervades the atmosphere and brings to mind a time when an artist found creative energy at this rural escape from city life. Outside, the rolling green landscape is intersected by picturesque stone walls. The sweeping hillside is further punctuated by blossoming fruit trees and mature oaks and sugar maples. It is not hard to imagine a distinguished gentleman in a three-piece tweed suit standing before an easel, a paintbrush in one hand and a palette in the other. This is clearly the home of an artist. This is Weir Farm. Weir Farm, in Branchville, Connecticut, exemplifies the "quiet marriage of art and tended landscape that so clearly defined the American Impressionist movement."¹ The painter Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919) acquired the farm in 1882 and summered at this country retreat for nearly forty years. During a period when railroads were expanding, populations were increasing, and America’s agrarian system was being replaced by industry, Weir was one of a group of artists who found comfort and inspiration in the quiet everyday settings of New England, and, in many ways, defined our vision of the American landscape. ¹Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, quoted in the Weir Farm National Historic Site General Management Planning Newsletter No. 2, Spring 1993.
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