Ski Stowe

Last Friday, I woke up early and drove to the outskirts of Danbury to Weir Farm National Historic Site. Along with the home of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, New Hampshire, Weir Farm is the only other locale in the National Park System devoted to an artist. It was a perfect fall day and as soon as I turned off from Route 7 I was treated to a quintessential Connecticut landscape of rolling hills, old stone walls, and grand estates. Weir Farm was the former home, studio, barn, and gardens of J. Alden Weir, one of the fathers of American Impressionism. Head inside the Visitors Center and you’ll watch a short video on his life and see photos of the artist with his buddies, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, and John Twachtman, who all loved coming out to the sprawling property for a day in the country. Take a walk around the grounds and down to the pond and you’ll instantly understand the allure. I toured the property with a park ranger and a group of art students from nearby Western Connecticut State University, who were going to spend the afternoon painting the scenery, still inspired by the landscape. Little has changed since the time of Weir. You can walk along the trails and see the exact spot where Weir painted many of his works. The stone walls, fields, and faded red barns are all the same. The only difference is that the trees have grown. 

In the mid-90s, I was hired by Art & Antiques Magazine to write a story on the period of time painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, lived on the shores of Lake George. This was to coincide with a photography exhibition of Stieglitz’s work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. I knew renowned abstract sculptor David Smith lived in Bolton Landing, but I honestly had no idea O’Keeffe lived in Lake George, since she’s far better known for her New Mexican motif. From 1918 to 1934, O’Keeffe would spend a good portion of her summer at the lake. She would return to Lake George for the last time in 1946 to spread Stieglitz’s ashes at the foot of a pine tree on the shores of the lake. Today, those ashes lie on the grounds of the Tahoe Motel. Next door, the house they lived in, Oaklawn, is still standing at The Quarters of the Four Seasons Inn. On a wall next to my desk, I have a poster of a dreamy mountain and lake landscape simply titled Lake George (1922). My brother, Jim, purchased this for me at the San Francisco Museum of Art, where the original O’Keeffe oil still hangs.