Historic American Art Colonies
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States Art Colonies
New England Art Colonies
Historic art colonies have played a crucial role in shaping American art by providing spaces for creativity, fostering artistic experimentation, and influencing the trajectory of artistic movements such as Impressionism, Tonalism, and Modernism. In New England, a constellation of art colonies emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each contributing uniquely to the region's artistic development. They provided artists with the freedom to explore new techniques and subjects, while their communal living and intellectual exchanges nurtured creativity and collaboration. Their legacy continues to resonate in New England's cultural heritage, where the spirit of artistic innovation thrives amid the region's natural beauty and historic charm.
Cape Ann Art Colony
Located along Massachusetts' North Shore, the Cape Ann Art Colony flourished in the late 19th century. Artists like Winslow Homer and Frederick Mulhaupt were drawn to Cape Ann's rugged coastline and picturesque harbors, which provided rich subject matter for their paintings. The colony's plein air painters captured the region's changing light and atmospheric effects, contributing to the development of American Impressionism and Realism.
Cos Cob Art Colony
Situated in Greenwich, Connecticut, the Cos Cob Art Colony emerged in the late 19th century as a gathering place for American Impressionists. Artists such as Childe Hassam and John Henry Twachtman found inspiration in Cos Cob's tranquil landscapes and the play of light on the nearby rivers and meadows. The colony fostered a style that blended American and European influences, contributing to the diversity of artistic expression in New England.
Dublin Art Colony
Nestled in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire, the Dublin Art Colony flourished at the turn of the 20th century. Artists such as Abbott Thayer and George de Forest Brush were drawn to Dublin's serene landscapes and community of intellectuals. The colony emphasized a return to nature and a spiritual connection with the land, influencing American Symbolism and early conservation efforts that resonated throughout New England.
Lyme Art Colony
Founded in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in the late 19th century, the Lyme Art Colony became synonymous with American Impressionism. Artists like Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, and Matilda Browne captured the region's rural charm and coastal scenery, contributing to a distinctly American interpretation of Impressionism. The colony's plein air painters established Old Lyme as a cultural destination and influenced subsequent generations of artists in New England.
Monhegan Island Art Colony
Off the coast of Maine, Monhegan Island attracted artists seeking to capture its dramatic cliffs, crashing waves, and rugged beauty. The colony, established in the early 20th century, included artists like Rockwell Kent and George Bellows, who depicted the island's isolation and natural grandeur. Monhegan Island's artist community contributed to the regional identity of Maine art and influenced broader American modernist movements.
The above brief essay, generated by AI and edited by us,
outlines how art colonies selected by us contributed to the development
of New England art, emphasizing their roles in fostering creativity, promoting
artistic innovation, and shaping the region's cultural identity through
various artistic movements and themes. Colonies we selected are based on
the level of coverage on them by us in both Resource Library articles
and essays and other Internet materials noted by us. Other colonies listed
below in this section of our Historic
American Art Colonies topic also made important contributions.
Blue Dome Colony
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
The Art of Alfred Hutty: Woodstock to Charleston (6/4/12)
From other websites:
"Dewing Woodward and the Blue Dome Fellowship" is a 2021 essay by Bruce Weber who says: "Dewing Woodward (known as Dewing) was the founder and president of the Blue Dome Fellowship, which thrived near Woodstock in the hamlet of Shady from 1913-1917." Accessed 6/22
Byrdcliffe Art Colony
(above: Eva Watson-Schütze, Jane Whitehead and Lily, 1905, on view at the Johnson Museum as part of its Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony exhibition Oct. 16 through Dec. 5. Courtesy of the Johnson Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
Byrdcliffe as a Utopian Community (3/25/05)
Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony with essay by Nancy Green, from Cornell University. Accessed July, 2015
From other websites:
Byrdcliffe Colony from Wikipedia
The Historic Woodstock Art Colony: The Arthur A. Anderson Collection is a 2023 exhibit at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz which says: "Long before the music festival in 1969 made Woodstock, New York, famous, it was home to what is considered America's first intentionally created, year-round arts colony -- founded in 1902 and still thriving more than 100 years later. Collecting the remarkable range of work produced there was Anderson's focus for three decades, resulting in the largest comprehensive assemblage of its type. The artists represented in it reflect the diversity of those who came to Woodstock, including Birge Harrison, Konrad Cramer, George Bellows, Eugene Speicher, Peggy Bacon, Rolph Scarlett and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, among many others." Section on Byrdcliffe Colony included in reference. Accessed 3/23
Cape Ann Art Colony
(above: Unknown artist, Artist Colony on the Cape (post card), c.1930-45, linen texture, color, 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
Artists of Cape Ann: A 150 Year Tradition; essay by Kristian Davies (8/24/04)
Artists of Cape Ann: A 150 Year Tradition; by Kristian Davies (8/23/04)
From other websites:
Cape Ann Museum offered online as of 2014, via the exhibitions page of its website, links to .pdf files for gallery guides of selected past exhibitions including To Gather Together and Keep these Bonds: Highlights from the Permanent Collection of the Cape Ann Museum, October 30, 2010 - May 29, 2011, with essay by Martha Oaks, Curator, 6 pages; Summer Outward Bound: The Robert L. and Elizabeth French Collection, Summer, 2010, with essay by Martha Oaks, Curator, 4 pages; Women Artists from the Cape Ann Museum. Collection: A Survey Exhibition, October 24, 2009 - January 31, 2010, with essay by Martha Oaks, Curator, 6 pages. Accessed June, 2014
Cornish Art Colony
The Cornish Colony from Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, National Park service. Accessed 5/22
Cornish Art Colony from Wikipedia. Accessed 5/22
Cornish Colony from AskArt.com. Accessed 5/22
Cos Cob Art Colony
(above: John Henry Twachtman, Old Holley House, Cos Cob, c.1890-1900, oil on canvas, 25.06 x 25.13 inches, courtesy of The Athenaeum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
"The Cos Cob Art Colony & American Impressionism at the Bush-Holley House" from the Greenwich Historical Society. Accessed 5/22
Coming Full Circle: The Greenwich Art Society Celebrates 100 at the Bruce Museum, an exhibit held February 11, 2012 - April 1, 2012 at the Bruce Museum. From the Bruce Museum. Accessed 5/22
Cos Cob art colony from Wikipedia. Accessed 5/22
"Japanism in the Cos Cob art colony - the influence of Japan at the Cos Cob, Connecticut art colony, 1890-1920," March, 2001 by Susan G. Larkin; "The art colonies of New England", April, 1999 by Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Tracie Felke from Magazine Antiques. [Link found to be expired as of 2015 audit. TFAO is saving the citation for use by researchers.]
"The Cos Cob Art Colony, Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore," article by Carter B. Horsley. From The City Review. Accessed 5/22
The New Spirit and the Cos Cob Art Colony: Before and After The
Armory Show, an
exhibit held October 9, 2013 to January 12, 2014 at Greenwich Historical
Society. From Art History News. Accessed 5/22
Cragsmoor Art Colony
"Cliff-top creatives & the artist colony of Cragsmoor" by Sharyn Flanagan in Hudson Valley One says: "The first artists who came to live and work in remote Cragsmoor arrived in the 1870s, drawn to its rural landscape of valleys and mountains and its ever-changing light and weather. Cragsmoor is located atop the Shawangunk Ridge, in the southern part of the Town of Wawarsing near Sam's Point Preserve, prized for its rugged beauty and outstanding views of the surrounding region." Accessed 5/22
"Brownstoner Upstate: Art Colonies of the Catskills, Part II - Cragsmoor" is a 2015 article in Brownstoner that says; "As we continue our three-part series on art colonies in the Catskills, we turn our attention to the mountain hamlet of Cragsmoor in Ulster County. Never heard of it? Not surprising. Other places with walkable Main Streets and charming locavore eateries get most of the attention, while Cragsmoor remains a hidden gem, tucked away in a remote spot near the top of the Shawangunk Ridge." Accessed 5/22
"Early Cragsmoor: The Beginning of an Art Colony" in About Town by Maureen Radl says: "Perched high on the Shawangunk Ridge in southern Ulster County, New York, Cragsmoor has long been a destination for seekers of beauty." Accessed 5/22
"A History of Artists' Colonies in the Hudson Valley" in Hudson Valley Magazine by Richard Klin says: "By the 1870s, the painters of the Hudson River School had successfully mined the region's beauty and majesty. In the next decade, the more adventurous artistic spirits set out to explore new terrain: the wilderness of Ulster County's Shawangunk Ridge. The artists' colony of Cragsmoor was spawned amid the ridge, the name itself indicative of a certain rusticity: a crag -- a steep cliff or rock -- and a moor -- a boggy stretch of land." n/d
Cragsmoor Art Colony from Wikipedia. Accessed July, 2015
Dublin Art Colony
Please click here to see artworks by artists affiliated with the Dublin Art Colony
(above: Abbott Handerson Thayer, Angel, 1887, oil on canvas, 36.2 x 28.1 inches, Smithsonian American Art Museum. (above: Eva Watson-Schütze, Jane Whitehead and Lily, 1905, on view at the Johnson Museum as part of its Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony exhibition Oct. 16 through Dec. 5. Courtesy of the Johnson Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
The Dublin Colony, by Barbara Ball Buff (6/12/01)
From other websites:
From Monadnock Art, "History of Art of the Dublin Art Colony" by Edie Clark says: "The Dublin Art Colony, which was not called such until much more recently, began in the personage of one artist, Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921) who came to Dublin in 1888 and whose artistic passion, eccentricity and magnetic personality subsequently attracted such a constellation of artists that the term came into being as a matter of convenience, nearly one hundred years later, in an effort to celebrate the deep artistic heritage of this small New Hampshire village."
East End Art Colony
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
Guild Hall: An Adventure in the Arts, Selections from the Permanent Collection (1/25/04)
From other websites:
"That Other East End Artists' Colony." By David Everett, February 10, 2008 in The New York Times. Accessed July, 2015
Fourteenth Street School
(above: Guy Pène du Bois,
The Confidence Man, c. 1919, oil on panel, 27.9 x 22.5 inches, Brooklyn
Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
From other websites:
Figure Study: The Fourteenth Street School and the Woman in Public is a 2011 exhibit at The Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia which says: "Artists including Kenneth Hayes Miller, Isabel Bishop, Guy Pene du Bois and Reginald Marsh, who all lived and worked in the Union Square neighborhood and studied or taught at the Art Students League, created a typology of urban dwellers, depicting them in various public and private activities." Accessed 5/22
Golden Heart Farm
From other websites:
Golden Heart Farm was a colony in New York, from Wikipedia. Accessed July, 2015
Greenwich Society of Artists
(above: Robert Walter Weir, The Greenwich Boat Club, 1833, oil on canvas, 21.2 x 30.5 inches, Princeton University Art Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
From other websites:
Pemding
Hampton Bays Art Colony
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
Bohemian Paradise: David Burliuk, Nicolai Cikovsky and the Hampton Bays Art Group (3/11/08)
From other websites:
"That Other East End Artists' Colony." By David Everett, February 10, 2008 in The New York Times. Accessed July, 2015
East Hampton Artist Colony from Wikipedia. Accessed July, 2015
Lyme Art Colony
Please click here to see artworks by artists affiliated with the Lyme Art Colony
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
A Circle of Friends: The Artists of the Florence Griswold House (4/20/07)
In Retrospect: Selected Works by Lyme Art Association Members; essay by Michael Lloyd (11/28/05)
A Matter of Style: The Influence of French Art on the Old Lyme Art Colony (9/27/04)
The American Art Colony at Lyme (2/7/02)
The Lure of Lyme: Celebrating 100 Years of the Lyme Art Colony (2/3/99)
From other websites:
The Lyme Art Colony from the Florence County Museum. Accessed July, 2015.
The Lyme Art Colony: An American Giverny, from lymeart.com. Accessed July, 2015
Institutional History from the Florence County Museum. Accessed July, 2015
"Introduction to the Lyme Art Colony" by Jeffrey Andersen, Florence County Museum, who says: "During the first two decades of the 20th century, the village of Old Lyme, Connecticut, was the setting for one of the largest and most significant art colonies in America. Centered in the boardinghouse of Miss Florence Griswold, the colony attracted many leading artists - Henry Ward Ranger, Childe Hassam, and Willard Metcalf among them - who were in the vanguard of the Tonalist and Impressionist movements." Accessed 5/22
Matilda Browne: Idylls of Farm and Garden is a 2017 exhibit at the Florence County Museum which says: "In Greenwich, where she lived most of her adult life, she was a founder of the Greenwich Society of Artists and exhibited in all of their annuals from the first, in 1912, through 1931. Yet this will be her first solo exhibition in more than eight decades and the first ever in a museum. " Also see 2/27/17 article in dayextra.com. Accessed 3/17
MacDowell Art Colony
From other websites:
MacDowell Art Colony from AskArt. Accessed July, 2015
MacDowell Colony, from Wikipedia. Accessed July, 2015
Images pending
Charlotte Blass
Paul Burlin
Lawrence Calcagno
Raymond Jonson
Helen Farnsworth Mears
John Raimondi
Nan Sheets
Matunuck Art Colony
Please click here to see artworks by artists affiliated with the Matunuck Art Colony
(above: William Trost Richards, Recruiting Station (Bethlehem), before 1862, oil on canvas, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
Painters of Matunuck, Rhode Island, 1873-1941; article by Lindsay Leard-Coolidge (12/30/10)
From other websites:
A Sense of Place: Painters of Matunuck, Rhode Island 1873-1941 from Lyman Allyn Art Museum. Accessed July, 2015
Painters of Matunuck, Rhode Island, 1873-1941; article by Lindsay Leard-Coolidge (12/30/10)
Images pending:
Caroline Atkinson
Frank Convers Mathewson
Eleanor Richards Price
Maverick Colony
(above: John Flannagan, Figure of Dignity - Irish Mountain Goat, 1932, Granite, and cast aluminum, on concrete plinth, 53 3/4 x 14 1/8 x 8 3/4 inches, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Alexander Shilling Fund, 1941. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
From other websites:
The Maverick Colony was founded near Woodstock by Hervey White, from Wikipedia. Accessed July, 2015
Hervey White and the Maverick Art Colony: An Historical Overview is section of the website The Maverick Festival, 1915 - 1931 from The Jean Gaede and Fritzi Striebel Archive of the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Accessed 4/22
Millay Colony for the Arts
From other websites:
Millay Colony for the Arts was founded in 1973 in Austerlitz, NY, from Wikipedia. Accessed July, 2015
Monhegan Island Art Colony
(above: Willard Metcalf, May Night (Florence Griswold House in Old Lyme, Connecticut.), 1906, oil on canvas, 99.5 ? 36.1 inches, National Gallery of Art. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
Lamar Dodd - Half a Century of Monhegan Summers; essay by Robert L. Stahl, M.D. (10/10/15)
A Gift to the Island; essay by Remak Ramsay (7/21/10)
Jay Connaway and the Landscape of New England (11/27/09)
A Painter's Paradise: Monhegan's Nineteenth-Century Artists; essay by Emily Grey (7/25/09)
The Monhegan Island Art Colony: 1858-2003; essay by Edward L. Deci (9/2/05)
From other websites:
A Century of Monhegan Art by Ed Deci. [Link found to be expired as of 2015 audit. TFAO is saving the citation for use by researchers.]
Mystic Art Colony
(above: Robert Brackman, Somewhere in America, 1934, oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 25 1/8 inches, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Please click here to view artworks by artists affiliated with the colony
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
Art Is Upon the Town: A Retrospective Exhibition; article by Willa T. Schuster (2/26/09)
From other websites:
Mystic Art Association history from Mystic Arts Center. Accessed July, 2015
The Nantucket Art Colony
Please click here to view artworks by artists affiliated with the colony
From other websites:
The Nantucket Art Colony, 1920-45 is a collaborative exhibition presented by the Nantucket Historical Association and the Artists Association of Nantucket. Accessed July, 2015
New Hope Art Colony
Please click here to view artworks by artists affiliated with the colony
Articles and essays from Resource Library:
From other websites:
History / Historic New Hope, PA, article by Terry A. McNealy, a Director of the New Hope Historical Society. The article appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of Bucks County Town & Country Living. Accessed July, 2015
New Hope Art Colony (Bucks County, Pennsylvania) from AskArt.com. Accessed July, 2015
Pennsylvania Impressionists: Valued at Last, April 7, 2003 article by Dennis Gaffney from PBS.Discusses New Hope impressionists. Accessed July, 2015
New Rochelle Art Colony
Please click here to see artworks by artists affiliated with the New Rochelle Art Colony
From other websites:
New Rochelle Art Association from Wikipedia. Accessed February, 2016
North Conway Art Colony
From other websites:
North Conway Art Colony in White Mountain Art from Wikipedia. Accessed July, 2015
Please click here to view additional Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States Art Colonies
Art Colonies (general information) through Cragsmoor Art Colony
Dixie Art Colony/Alabama Gulf Coast Colony through Lyme Art Colony
MacDowell Art Colony through North Conway Art Colony
Ogunquit Art Colony through Roycroft Art Colony
San Diego Art Colony through Stone City Art Colony
Taos Art Colony through Yaddo Art Colony
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States Art Colonies
Midwestern States Art Colonies
Rocky Mountain and Southwestern States Art Colonies
Return to Art Colonies
Return to Topics in American Representational Art
TFAO catalogues:
Links to sources of information outside of our web site are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other web sites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. TFAO neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations. Although TFAO includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see TFAO's General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.
*Tag for expired US copyright of object image:
Search Resource Library
Copyright 2022 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.