WHAT THE OLD LYME ARTISTS SAW: Treeless vistas they painted are longgone, but viewing them today inspires a conservation ethic

摘要

One hundred and seven years ago, the landscape painter Henry Ward Ranger urged on a group of his artist friends to start painting the landscapes around Old Lyme, Connecticut. They stayed at Florence Griswold's boarding house, a large federal house onthe main street of the village. Their subjects were unexamined corners of a coastal countryside that included farm fields, salt marshes, rivers, ponds, and woods. This was not the first time visitors had noted the beauty of the area. In 1876, a writer for Harper's had observed, "The variety in the landscape would drive an artist to distraction. It is a singular mixture of the wild and the tame, of the austere and the cheerful." But when Ranger came with his colleagues, it was the first time a school ofart had built itself around this land.