Arts of Tolland presents Dead Artists Society: Tolland Artists of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Arts of Tolland presents
Dead Artists Society: Tolland Artists of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Arts of Tolland is announcing the upcoming opening of a special art exhibit coordinating with the celebration of Tolland’s 300th anniversary. Dead Artists Society: Tolland Artists of the 19th and 20th Centuries will open on Friday evening, May 8, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The gallery in the Arts Center, 22 Tolland Green, will be open from May 9 through June 7 on Wednesdays from 2 to 5 p.m., and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The exhibit will feature nearly a dozen artists who lived in or near Tolland or who painted in the area during the mid- to late-1800s through the mid-1900s. Some were professional artists, others were talented amateurs. The one thing they have in common is that they all are “no longer with us.”

Franklin DeHaven was a visitor to Tolland. Although he was based in New York he was loosely allied with the American Impressionists who summered in the art colonies in Old Lyme and Mystic, CT. From 1913 to 1916 he rented a house on Tolland Green, and he and his landlord, Samuel Simpson, painted there. Both are featured in the Dead Artists Society show.

Most people familiar with Tolland or UCONN have heard of Ratcliffe Hicks - attorney, legislator, and millionaire philanthropist (Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture, Ratcliffe Hicks Memorial School). Few realize that his sister Emma Hicks Downing (1845-1924) was a very talented painter. She studied at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, and many of her paintings are evocative of the Hudson River style.

Later artists in the exhibit include Alfred Ludwig and three of his eleven children. Mr. Ludwig operated an ice house and cut ice from Shenipsit Lake. As a young man he did decorative painting on horse-drawn wagons, but he didn’t start painting seriously until he retired in the 1940s. One daughter, Helen Ludwig McGill, became a professional artist in San Francisco, and she described her father’s work enthusiastically: “They call him a Grandma Moses, but his work is so much better!”

Other artists in the exhibit include Edna Thomforde Riley, Sarah Cogswell Preston, Lizzie Canfield Hicks and Elizabeth Hicks. There are also several paintings of Tolland subjects by unknown artists, including a portrait of Captain Benjamin Loomis.