Clark Voorhees

Clark Greenwood Voorhees (May 29, 1871 – 1933) was an American Impressionist and Tonalist landscape painter and one of the founders of the Old Lyme Art Colony.

The son of a stockbroker, Voorhees was born on May 29, 1871, in New York City. He was initially drawn to the sciences and earned degrees in Chemistry from Yale and Columbia Universities. In 1894, Voorhees began to seriously pursue fine art (which had always been a hobby) when he enrolled in classes at the Art Students League. The following year, Voorhees enrolled at the Metropolitan School of Fine Art. He also studied with Irving Ramsey Wiles on Long Island and with Leonard Ochtman in Connecticut. In 1897, Voorhees traveled to Europe, studying with Benjamin Constant and J. P. Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris and spending time in the French village of Barbizon as well as in the Netherlands.

Voorhees first visited Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1893. In 1896, he returned with his mother and sister, who stayed at an informal boarding house run by Florence Griswold. The Florence Griswold House (now the Florence Griswold Museum ) would eventually become the center of Old Lyme’s artistic community and it is very likely that Henry Ward Ranger, often described as the Old Lyme colony’s founder, was introduced to both Old Lyme and the Griswold House through Voorhees.

Stylistically, Voorhees was one of the Old Lyme artists who remained at least somewhat loyal to the Barbizon-derived, Tonalist style associated with Ranger even after the majority had adopted Childe Hassam’s Impressionist style. Most of Voorhees’s paintings are undated, but it appears that he gradually adopted a more Impressionistic approach later in life. He also experimented with etching in the 1930s.

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