With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Thomas Willoughby Nason
Printmaking
1889 – 1971
- Biography/Description of Work
Born in Massachusetts, Thomas Willoughby Nason worked as secretary to an attorney and settled with his wife in Boston after World War I. He became interested in prints, collecting many, and learned engraving, woodcuts and wood engraving. By 1923 Nason was beginning to be known for his prints. When his employer died in 1931, he and Margaret decided he was ready to become a full-time artist, and they moved to a secluded site in Lyme where he adapted the basement of his home into a studio. The vernacular architecture and landscape around them formed the subject matter of Nason’s work. He represented rural New England during the Depression, with abandoned and decaying old farms and mill villages, in a Regionalist style. He also provided illustrations for poetry volumes, such as “The Wood Pile” by Robert Frost in 1961 (the title poem was written in 1914), and book plates.
- Sources view
- Price, Charles. Thomas W. Nason: New England virtues aged in wood. Lyme Historical Society and Florence Griswold Museum, 1993.
- Associated Resource(s)