b/w lithograph
1966
13.75 x 10.25
signed in pencil.
The Old Lyme Congregational Church located on Ferry Road, a quintessentially New England landmark, was captured by Walter DuBois Richards. The church was a favorite subject of Old Lyme Art Colony painters. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. Five other Congregational churches were built on essentially the same design in the Connecticut towns of Milford (1823), Cheshire (the 1827 First Congregational Church of Cheshire), Litchfield (the 1829 First Congregational Church of Litchfield), Southington (1830), and Guilford (the 1830 First Congregational Church of Guilford). All six churches have front porticos with four fluted columns, the doors of all six have the same dimensions, all six steeples are of the same design and are surmounted by weathervanes that appear to have been cast from one mold. Artist Walter DuBois Richards has been called a "town treasure" by his legion of admirers, not only for his teaching and guidance, but because he has been the visual and nostalgic chronicler of New Canaan. In his favorite medium, lithography, he has recorded the old railroad station, the library, Waveny Mansion and the parks in spring and winter. His work was lauded in a 1982 Connecticut Society of Architects' Award for Environmental Improvement which cited him as "one of Connecticut's most respected painters and illustrators whose lithographs, watercolors and drawings have fostered pride in our heritage and have helped preserve historic buildings for future generations." This recognition is only one in a very long list of awards and prizes Richards has received since he first exhibited in the 1933 May Show at the Cleveland Art Museum. He was given the highest award there in lithography for four consecutive years, 1933 to 1936. In 1937 six of his lithographs and two linocuts were included in the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition, Paintings and Prints by Cleveland Artists. The same year he participated in an international exhibition in Paris, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. In 1966 his work was included in Two Hundred Years of Watercolor Painting in America at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and ten years later, in Two Hundred Years of American Illustration at the New York Historical Society. His most recent accolade was the selection of his 1935 linoleum cut, Woodcutters, for inclusion in the catalogue "Prints at the Smithsonian, the Origins of a National Collection", published in conjunction with an exhibition celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Smithsonian Institution in the Hall of Graphic Arts. He was, in good company, "along with Durer and Rembrandt."
