William Carrigan, Midsummer Masque.
Collection of the D.M. Hunt Library, Falls Village, CT.
Falls Village
Emil Carlsen was the first of the artists to paint the countryside outside of Falls Village, buying a house in 1905 on what is now Route 63 in the Huntsville area of the Town of Canaan, where he spent summers for the next 27 years. In a studio in his home, and then in an adjacent barn, the artist known in New York for his still life paintings turned his attention to landscapes. He was visited a number of times by his friend Willard Metcalf, a prominent impressionist painter, who painted in the area and fished in the Hollenbeck River behind Carlsen’s house. A number of other artists visited the area at the turn of the century, and William Carrigan and Lillian Genth each bought homes in town. In the 1920s a group of illustrators also settled in Falls Village, along with Ezra Winter, one of the most successful muralists of his generation and the creator of the murals in the foyer of Radio City Music Hall.