Get out your snow shoes! It’s snowing outside!
Primitive painter Lou Grosvenor Frink (c. 1870-1956) clearly loved winter. Frink lived in Windham, Connecticut for much of his life. Although his profession is listed as “overseer for a private estate” in early twentieth-century censuses, he was a talented artist who produced many memorable views of his hometown--especially in the winter, when it was covered with snow. Frink’s clear compositions, with their muted seasonal colors, capture quaint “in the moment” outdoor scenes. Features such as classic New England stone walls, houses, and barns, sometimes dot his snow white landscapes.
Many art historians don’t like to use the term “primitive” these day, considering it pejorative, but it perfectly describes Frink’s naïve vision and links his work to the folk tradition of other “primitive” artists such as Anna Mary Robertson (“Grandma”) Mosesand Henri Rousseau. Frink’s work, like the work of these artists, sometime contains allusions to mainstream contemporary art, of which he was clearly well aware. The family of the American Impressionist painter J. Alden Weir was among Frink’s Windham neighbors, and their house and pets figure among Frink’s subjects.
The Connecticut Historical Society has a large collection of Frink’s paintings documenting many aspects of early twentieth-century life in a small, rural Connecticut town. Two of Frink’s paintings, including one of “Mrs. J. Alden Weir’s Persian Cat,” are in the current exhibition at CHS, “Cats & Dogs in Art and Life,” which will be on view through April 6, 2013. For more information, go to the CHS Exhibit page.
Special thank to Liz Blakelock for her help with this article.
