Philip Kappel, Winter Tracery, New Milford Green.
Collection of the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT.
New Milford
New Milford, a prosperous merchant village in the 18th and 19th centuries, was the subject of some of the earliest paintings in northwest Connecticut, beginning with the portraits and landscapes by Ralph Earl at the end of the 18th century. Later, as one of the first railroad stops in the region, the town attracted New York-based painters, such as Willard Paddock and Francis Von Der Lancken, who built studios here and operated art schools in town. The Western View Farm was converted in the 1920s into a rustic hotel with studio space for traveling artists. Edith Newton, who settled in New Milford in 1917, and Philip Kappel, who arrived in 1930, were printmakers who worked in a representational style, but many of the artists who settled in New Milford were more modernist in their outlook. These included Peter Blume, Louis Gugliemi, and José De Creeft.