Weir Farm National Historic Site: A Wintertime Art History tour includes New England Hardwoods

A park partnership with Weir Preserve creates a great place to walk and learn a bit about Impressionist painters

What the Eastern part of our great country lacks in iconic landscape parks - Grand Canyon, Yellowstone or Yosemite - it makes up for with important historic and cultural parks that are equally as iconic in their own way.  As the only national park unit dedicated to American painting, Weir Farm fits that bill.   My girlfriend Craig and I were visiting her friends in New Canaan, Connecticut when our handy National Park App showed we were within 20 minutes of Connecticut’s only national park unit, Weir Farm National Historic Site.

We visited during the winter, so our drive to Weir Farm took us through an open New England hardwood forest.   Without leaves on the trees we could really see into the forest and discern not only the glaciated landscape, but also lots of old rock walls that speak of earlier times before cars, electricity and the Internet.  In summer, we simply would not have had the same view. 

We arrived at the home of J. Alden Weir, American impressionist painter, and parked just across the road in a small parking lot that was only half full on a Saturday morning.  Weir moved to this farm in 1882 and the house then was almost 100 years old, so it is really old now!  The Weir Farm, where he lived for 37 years, was originally 238 acres.  The Park Service manages 60 acres and it is adjacent to the 110 acre Weir Preserve, which is managed by the non-profit Weir Farm Art Center, a park partner.  The whole area is nicely interconnected with a great trail system.

I’m not much of an art historian, but like many people I appreciate art that I like.  I like landscapes and I like Weir’s stuff.  By 1890, influenced by his time on the Farm, he was painting outdoor scenes in an Impressionist style.  But, as the park brochure notes, “He did not paint with the intense broken colors that he saw in Paris (where he studied for 5 years in the 1870s) but used subtle harmonies of color…in blues, greens, and silvery gray.”   His paintings are definitely on the softer end of the scale and easy on the eye.  As you walk around the grounds, it is easy to see how this landscape inspired him.

Unfortunately, the buildings at Weir Farm are only open May 1 to October 31.  So while we had great wintertime views into the leafless forest and didn’t have to worry about bugs (a big plus), our interaction with the Weir’s home and studio was by peering through windows.  But the grounds are open and there is a very comprehensive “Walking the Cultural Landscape” self-guided brochure that introduces you to the landscape and buildings and helps you understand all that went on here.  There is a “secret garden” and a chicken coop, an icehouse and livestock pens, a stone table and garden terraces.  You can wander around the grounds 365 days a year.  We spent much of the day here.

The author birding from the stone table at Weir Farm

After Weir died in 1919, his daughter Dorothy and her husband, Mahonri Young (a grandson of Brigham Young) lived on the Farm and continued its artistic tradition.  Mahonri Young was a sculptor and painter and he eventually built his studio at the Farm.  Both the Weir and Young studios, as well as the main house are open to the public in the summer.  We’ll need to come back for that.

Thoroughly exploring the farm’s grounds and peering into a dozen or so windows had given us a bit of an appetite.  A quick look at Yelp and we found ourselves a pub just a few miles away in Ridgefield.  It is an added treat to visit parks that are in close proximity to eating and drinking establishments!  Over a Guinness and fish tacos we not only plotted the rest of our afternoon at Weir Farm and adjacent Weir Preserve, but inspired by the artist, we planned to visit several galleries in DC before flying back to Alaska.

Back at Weir Farm, across the road from the house and studios, we walked a 1.5 mile roundtrip trail that passes by a 3.6 acre pond that Weir built after one of his paintings won $2,500 in a Boston Art Club contest.  Today, it's hard to image building a pond, boathouse, dock, and gazebo on a small island for $2,500.  Weir liked to hunt, fish, and hike and this pond provided a ready-made place for fish and waterfowl.  We saw Canada Geese, Mallards, and Ring-Necked Ducks as we hiked around Weir’s Pond and speculated what it would have been like 100 years ago before all the neighboring houses were built …back when this area was still very rural and great American painters were capturing that feeling on canvass. Thankfully, a concerned community of artists and friends were able to preserve this unique place for posterity.  And we certainly enjoyed it!