Florence Griswold Museum - Eugene Higgins

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Eugene Higgins
Lyme Art Colony
American, (February 28, 1874–February 19, 1958) In Lyme: summers 1924-1958
Eugene Higgins established his reputation painting farm workers and itinerants nearly 75 years after Millet. His somber canvases are dominated by harvesters, rag pickers, and migrants, subjects drawn largely from imagination, but reinforced by experience.

He was born in Kansas City, Missouri and moved with his father, who was an Irish stonecutter and builder, to St. Louis when he was four. His father encouraged his interest in art. By age 12 Higgins has decided to become a painter. In 1890 he enrolled in night classes in life drawing at Washington Univerisity. In 1896 he went to study in Paris at the Academy Julien under benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul laurens, as well as at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Gerome.

Around 1900 he moved to New York and established a studio there where his efforts to depict the downtrodden did not meet with much success. He made a meager living until the 1920s and 30s when romanticizing human conflict became fashionable. In 1921 he was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design. He frequently exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Insitute of Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery. He was a member of the National Arts Club, the Society of American Etchers, and the Salmagundi Club.

Higgins began to spend his summers in Lyme around 1924 when he also exhibited at the Lyme Art Association. In the late 1920s he and his wife, opera singer Anita Rio, moved to a simple house in the woods which they named "Balley-Hooley." there they lived a simple life where Higgins converted an old barn into a studio.

He continued to exhibit in Old Lyme and in New York City into the 1950s. Some critics found his work gloomy while others thought it heroic and powerful. But nearly all admired his genuine compassion and unwavering commitment to what he called "the beauty of elemental conditions truthfully portrayed." Higgins died in New York in 1958.