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Henry C. White
Lyme Art Colony
American, (September 15, 1861–September 28, 1952) In Lyme: 1903-1921
Henry C. White was the son of Judge John Hurlburt White and Jennie M. Cooke. For two years after his graduation from Hartford High School in 1882, he was clerk of the Hartford Probate Court where his father presided. His art training had begun at fourteen with private lessons in 1875 from Dwight Tryon, who became a life-long friend. White is the author of the major biography, The Life and Art of Dwight William Tryon, published in 1930.

From 1884-86 White studied in New York, privately with Tryon and at the Art Students League with Kenyon Cox and George de Forest Brush. In 1889 he became a teacher of drawing at Hartford High School and built his first studio. That same year he was married to Grace Holbrook. He began to spend summers in Waterford, Connecticut in 1891, except for 1896 and 1897, when he traveled in England, France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. On his return in 1897 he gave up high school teaching, taught briefly at the school of the Art Society of Hartford, and held a private drawing class in his studio.

Although White traveled frequently, sketching as he went, he was essentially a painter and etcher of the Connecticut landscape and shore. From 1903-07 he spent spring and fall in Old Lyme. He experienced his favorite seasons three times over each year. Spring in Hartford was followed a week or two later by spring at Old Lyme, then finally at Waterford. Late autumn was the other time of year he would be always outdoors sketching in pencil or pastel. Summer was his favorite season for art because summer greens were “too much spinach!” His oil paintings were usually done in the studio, a composite of remembered impressions.

In 1903 White and his family stayed at the Florence Griswold House in Old Lyme. later they rented what was called the Brick Store farther down Main Street. White’s Knox, the first automobile in Old Lyme, was sheltered in a barn opposite a tree called “Barbizon Oak,” because artists like Ranger, Dessar, “Uncle” Howe and White painted it so often.

When White realized, early in his career, that he could exhibit at important shows and galleries without fear of rejection, he stopped seeking such status and limited himself to occasional one-man exhibitions. Yet his influence on art in Connecticut was strong. He was a founder and officer of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, which, from its beginnings in 1910, developed into an important showcase for artists in Connecticut and neighboring states. He painted until he was nearly eighty.

Though he asserted that Impressionism had touched him little, he shared with the American Impressionists their attitudes toward nature and some of their techniques. His son, Nelson C. White, a landscape artist in Waterford, has said that "fleeting evanescent effects" were what moved his father, but "that his castles in the air, if you will, had foundations under them, as Thoreau so wisely recommended.’

Further reading:
Henry C. White, 1861-1952: Memorial exhibition. Exh. cat., Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, 1954.