Lyman Allyn Art Museum - Rebecca Samuels #5 pt 2

The Lyman Allyn Museum

The Lyman Allyn Museum was founded in 1932 by Harriet Upson Allyn in honor of her father Lyman Allyn. In New London Connecticut, this museum’s collection consists of more than 10,000 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, furniture, and decorative arts. Its emphasis is on American Art from the 18^th through 20^th centuries. This building was designed by Charles A. Platt and is housed with a Neo-Classical look. (Some of this paragraph was paraphrased from the Lyman Allyn Museum’s Website - http://www.lymanallyn.org/)

This museum was a different experience than normal because I didn’t go with my father. I figured time was winding down for the semester so I had to go when he was at work. Instead, I drove about an hour by myself to the Lyman Allyn Museum of Art. I arrived at the open time 10:00 on Saturday morning, just as security was unlocking the front door. As I walked in the museum I felt like I was in a scary movie because it was so dark. I was thrilled to see that the first floor contained numerous paintings rather than other artworks like china and most sculptures in which I am rarely interested in. The first painting that took my interest was William McCloy’s, “Patricia, My Wife.” Every aspect of this woman’s face appears to be realistic. My art teacher in high school once told me that it is important to be careful when placing lines in the face because it can make a person look much older than they really are. McCloy does a great job by shading the face rather than painting lines.

Another painting that caught my eye was “Arrival of the 6:20” by James Daughtery. It is a very colorful piece but Daughtery accents this painting with many whites. He also used these whites to shade the peoples’ clothing. This Museum Experience course has inspired me to try painting with oil. It is interesting to see people use oil in their paintings and have it somewhat protrude off of the canvas. It almost gives it a three-dimensional look. When I came across the furniture I immediately thought of my father and how much he loves the variations of furniture in the different museums. As I came across more furniture I realized how badly they were in need of a good dusting—they weren’t clean at all. I feel like that is something only I would notice in a museum of great artwork!

If I was painting a picture like Albert Bierstadt’s, “Sunrise on the Matterhorn,” I would have become easily irritated and I probably would have quit a quarter of the way through. Up close, the mountain doesn’t look like much—not even a mountain. When you step back, you can see the major difference in its looks. This painting uses a great light source which makes the mountain pink. The focal point of this piece is the mountain in the top right hand corner. Also, as your eyes come down the left hand side, the painting begins to get darker with trees and grass. Thomas Cole’s “Mt. Aetna from Taormina, Sicily,” is a painting that shows the point of view of a person in Sicily. Even though the building behind the columns is slightly falling apart, Cole made sure he did the painting exactly how he saw it. The columns in this painting were also carefully painted to perfection. The sunset in this picture is the clear light source. This painting starts out very dark at the bottom and as it reaches the top of the sky, it becomes lighter. The mountain in this painting also looks like a volcano because there is what looks like smoke coming out of it and blowing into the wind.

Even though the guard told me that upstairs only consisted of movie props, I decide to take a look anyways. As I was climbing the stairs, there were two of the biggest paintings I have ever seen of men hunting what looked like a whale. As I approached the first room, I realized that a lot of the paintings contained men and their hard work—like coal mining, steel workers, pilots, farmers, etc. This part of the museum was called “America at Work” and seemed to show the hardships people had during the Great Depression. The other rooms upstairs contained film works which I didn’t feel related to our museum experience so I completed my self-guided tour and left happily.

It turned out that I devoted more time than necessary to this museum because I thought it was larger than it actually is. The fact I couldn’t bring my father along for this museum broke my heart because I knew he would have wanted to be there just like all the museums before this one. It’s a shame that in the real world people have to work (just kidding). I am also somewhat angry at the fact I drove an hour by myself to a museum that was almost the size of my house. I expected more than I got out of this museum and I think that is what upset me. I’m all for small museums but this one—to me—was not much of a success compared to other museums I have visited earlier in the course.

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