Tea Day at Mattatuck Museum

Tea Day 1931: The art Community at Old Lyme

Edward Volker

When I saw the announcement for the exhibition at the Mattatuck Museum on life in the Old Lyme Art Colony, I knew I had to return to this small but interesting museum.  I invited my friend June and we made the trip to Waterbury.  On our way, one wrong turn gave us the chance to tour around the city.  Ultimately, we found a parking space and entered the Museum.  

The exhibition was inspired by the painting by Edward Volkert which captured the annual garden party hosted by the Lyme Art Association.  The show included many old friends as well artists I was not familiar with which is the best mix in any show.  What I particularly pleased by the fact that this show included a number of women artists.  Below are just a few of my new favorite artists from the show - although the painting are not necessarily the ones on display.

Margaret Miller Cooper      

A painter of landscapes, especially of Connecticut, Margaret Cooper Studied at the National Academy of Design and the Pratt Institute in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fie Arts in Philadelphia.  In 1935, she moved to Lyme, Connecticut, and painted with artist colony residents William Chadwick and Gertrude Nason.

Bessie Onahotema Potter Vonnoh

A Saint Louis native, Bessie Onahotema Potter Vonnoh produced genre statuettes depicting domestic and feminine subjects that not only captured a refined segment of turn of the century society, but also contributed to the vitalization of small bronze sculpture in America.

Helen Savier Dumond was raised in Portland Oregon but went to New York City to study at the Art Students League.  She also studied in France and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1897 and 1898.  She moved with he husband Frank to Old Lyme in 1906.  

I simply love the green on her palette.

There were also other artists whose works I enjoyed, including Harry Leslie Hoffman, E. Gregory Smith, Charles Vezin and Ruth Middleton.  June and I also took a quick peak at the famous Waterbury Button Museum which is housed within the MATT.

A final walk through of the small exhibition entitled Out of the Shadow: Edwin Augustus Moore. Moore was a talented Connecticut artist who studied at the Art Students League and National Academy of Design.  His early art specialized in painting of animals, but later he moved on to watercolors.  While never a big fan of portraits of farm animals, I did enjoyed his landscapes.

We ended our day with a delightful lunch at a nearby restaurant.