Object Type: Work on Paper

Medium and Support: pastel on paper

Credit Line: Florence Griswold Museum; Gift of Yetta Groshans

Accession Number: 2006.10

Groshans executed this pastel during a trip to Connecticut in the 1970s. It depicts the profile of the Connecticut State Armory in Hartford, designed by the architect Benjamin Morris and dedicated by President William Howard Taft on November 12, 1909. Groshans diminishes the impact of the monumental granite building by setting it at a distance and in shadow.

To the right of the Armory stands the corporate headquarters of Aetna Life and Casualty Company. Built in 1931 and designed by James Gamble Rogers, it is believed to be the largest Colonial Revival building in the country.

Groshans painted still lifes, portraiture, and landscapes, some influenced by Surrealism and some, like this Connecticut landscape, including a shoftening of shadows and edges that reminds one of the Regionalism of Grant Wood.