Fig. 1: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
White House in a Spring Landscape, Old Lyme, CT
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art

In 1893, soon after receiving a master’s degree in chemistry, Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933) took a bicycle trip along the Connecticut shore, stopping in the picturesque town of Old Lyme.  Today, Old Lyme is a place-name familiar to anyone interested in nineteenth-century American art; indeed, art historian William Gerdts has referred to the art colony that would soon spring up there as “the most famous Impressionist-oriented art colony in America.”1 When Voorhees first arrived in Old Lyme, however, the town’s fame as an artistic center was still to come—and, in fact, might never have come at all had it not been for Voorhees himself. During the summer of 1896, Voorhees, who had abandoned chemistry in favor of art, returned to Old Lyme, boarding at the Bacon House while his mother and sister stayed at the informal boarding house run by Florence Griswold. It is very likely that Henry Ward Ranger (1858–1916), generally considered the founder of the Old Lyme art colony, first stayed at the Florence Griswold House—which became the center of Old Lyme’s artistic community—as a result of Voorhees’s recommendation.2  

Voorhees, an active and important member of the Old Lyme colony, has been rather overshadowed by some of his more famous peers, Ranger and Childe Hassam (1859–1935) among them. Much of his best work has remained in the hands of descendants and has not therefore, been widely seen. In addition, Voorhees was one of a group of Old Lyme artists who remained at least somewhat loyal to the Barbizon-derived, tonalist style associated with Ranger even after the majority had adopted Hassam’s impressionist style. While Voorhees did ultimately adopt a more impressionistic approach to both brushwork and coloration, he never abandoned his tonalist inclinations entirely. Instead, he played with both styles, adopting whichever best suited the subject at hand. The result is a refreshingly mixed body of work.

Fig. 2: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
Sill Lane, Old Lyme
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches
Signed lower center
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art
Fig. 3: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
Apple Blossoms
Oil on board, 18 x 24 inches
Signed lower right
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art

Voorhees achieved considerable recognittion during his lifetime, exhibiting regularly along with the other members of the Old Lyme art colony as well as at exhibitions held by the National Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists, the American Watercolor Society, the Carnegie Institute, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He was awarded a bronze medal at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition and, the following year, received one of the National Academy’s three Hallgarten Prizes, which honored the best three oil paintings produced in the United States by artists under the age of thirty-five. Today, works by Clark Voorhees can be found in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, the Florence Griswold Museum, and the Chicago Union League Club.

The son of a well-to-do stockbroker, Clark Greenwood Voorhees was born on May 29, 1871, in New York City. He was originally drawn to the sciences, probably because of a fascination with the natural world, which also manifested itself in a passion for amateur ornithology and for drawing out-of-doors. Increasingly unfulfilled by laboratory work, Voorhees spent more and more of his time drawing and, soon after his first visit to Old Lyme, he abandoned chemistry and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League and the Metropolitan School of Fine Art in New York. A few years later, in 1897, he moved to Paris to study art at the famed Académie Julian under J. P. Laurens and Benjamin Constant. Voorhees' also visited the village of Barbizon outside Paris and made lengthier stays in Laren and Alkmaar, Holland. During these early, formative years, Voorhees took additional instruction from the marine and portrait painter Irving R. Wiles (1861–1948) on New York’s Long Island, and from the landscapist Leonard Ochtman (1854–1934) at Cos Cob, Connecticut.

Fig. 4: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
Landscape, Early Spring
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art
Fig. 6: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
October Mountain in Winter, Lenox, MA
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Stockbridge Art Exhibition label, verso
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art

In 1902, Voorhees exhibited at the Old Lyme art colony’s first annual exhibition; the following year, he purchased an eighteenth-century home in Old Lyme and became an established resident. He played a very active role in the community, becoming a charter member of the town’s volunteer fire department and eventually, president of its library board. So it is no surprise that many of his most characteristic oils are devoted to Old Lyme scenery. White House in a Spring Landscape, Old Lyme, CT (Fig. 1) is a charming, quintessentially New England vignette, depicting a green-shuttered, white wooden house nestled within the abundant, pale-green foliage of springtime. Sill Lane, Old Lyme (Fig. 2) showcases Voorhees’ love of vibrant color, as well as his skilled draftsmanship and attention to detail. Voorhees reveled in spring’s bright sunlight and profusion of colors; the aforementioned White House in a Spring Landscape, along with Apple Blossoms (Fig. 3) and Landscape, Early Spring (Fig. 4), all painted in the artist’s more impressionistic vein, are examples of his many lively variations upon the springtime theme. He had begun collecting Japanese prints while in Paris and displayed them in his Old Lyme home; the influence of these prints is obvious in the collapsed perspective and angular branches of Apple Blossoms.

Fig. 5: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
Winter Moonrise
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art

At least during the earlier part of his career, Voorhees was better known for his winter and nighttime scenes. Winter Moonrise (Fig. 5), which exhibits a more tonalist approach to coloration, is almost certainly the painting described in a 1908 New York Times review: “The light lies softly on the snow, and through the branches of the trees is seen a cool sky. The picture is so large, so simple, and quiet that at first glance it has a look of emptiness, but its dignity and spaciousness grow upon one with every moment of attention given to it.”3 In another subtly colored winter scene, October Mountain in Winter, Lenox, MA (Fig. 6), Voorhees employs soft brushwork to suggest the quiet and stillness of a snow-blanketed landscape. This canvas is one of many that Voorhees painted while staying in his socially prominent wife’s hometown of Lenox, Massachusetts. It was also one of the many paintings that he exhibited with the local Stockbridge Art Association between 1910 and 1931.

Fig. 7: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
The Cliff Walk, Newport, R.I., ca. 1916
Oil on board, 18 x 24 inches
Signed lower right
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art
Fig. 8: Clark Greenwood Voorhees (1871–1933)
Portrait of a House, Bermuda
Oil on artist board, 12 x 16 inches
Signed lower left
Courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art

The Cliff Walk, Newport, R. I. (Fig. 7) is surely one of Voorhees' most appealing creations. It depicts his wife and children picnicking near the shore’s edge, and the golden yellow grass, the vividly blue water, and the dash of red provided by a child’s hat come together in a sparkling re-creation of gentle seaside gaiety. Voorhees used the same vivid colors when painting in Bermuda, where, beginning in 1919, the artist, his wife, and their three children spent many winters. Like many of his fellow painters, Voorhees was drawn to the island partly because its climate allowed for painting in plein air even during the winter months, and the paintings he produced there, like Portrait of a House, Bermuda (Fig. 8), exude the warmth of the island’s tropical atmosphere. In 1928, a critic for The New York Times wrote that The Peacock Sea, another one of Voorhees’ Bermuda compositions, was “permeated with haunting, unforgettable beauty.”4

Hawthorne Fine Art, located on New York’s Upper East Side, presented The Light Lies Softly: the Impressionist Art of Clark Greenwood Voorhees, the first significant exhibition of the artist’s work in three decades in early 2010. The exhibition displayed approximately thirty paintings, many never before publicly shown. A full-color catalogue, featuring a foreword by Jennifer Krieger, Hawthorne’s founder and managing partner, and an essay by Marshall N. Price, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Academy in New York, accompanied the exhibition. For more information about the exhibition visit www.hawthornefineart.com, or email info@hawthornefineart.com.

Olivia H. Good, currently completing her masters at the Bard Graduate Center, is the research assistant at Hawthorne Fine Art and is carrying out research for the Department of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.