Nature's Appeal

Walter Griffin was born in Portland, ME, where his father was a ship carver, in 1861.

In his teens, Griffin entered the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on a scholarship. His studies continued at the Academy school in New York City beginning in 1885, followed by École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In 1890, Griffin settled in the commune of Fleury-en-Bière, where he traveled and painted in the Barbizon area. By the late 1890s, he opened the Walter Griffin's Summer Painting School in Quebec City, Canada, and in 1898 began teaching at the Art Society of Hartford, CT, moving to Old Lyme, CT, in 1904.

Griffin embraced Impressionism and mastered his own “secret” approach to laying paint colors down on canvas. According to a close friend, the painter would not mix his colors on the palette, but rather pick up two colors on the same brush and mix them on the canvas—a difficult painting technique to master, but the effects were stunning.

Beginning in 1908, Griffin would spend his life going back-and-forth from Maine to Europe. He died in 1933.