This week: the painters. Thirty of them arrive Saturday for Plein Air Litchfield, and the ones who worked the same hills a century ago left their pictures with the Historical Society. Plus a full events calendar, which now lives on the website.
On the calendar: every event the Ledger tracks, close to two hundred right now, sorted by day and filtered by town and by type, updated each week. The week's picks still run below. The full list is at litchfieldledger.com/events. Also this week: Cornwall's Ag Fair on the Village Green Saturday, and the Juilliard String Quartet closing Music Mountain's 97th season Sunday, with the Martha Graham Company on the lawn at 2:00 before the concert.
Patrick
The Litchfield Ledger
People Have Been Painting Litchfield County Outdoors for 130 Years
"View from Chestnut Hill" - Adelaide Deming, 1920
Starting Saturday, you may notice painters sitting along roadsides and in fields around Litchfield County.
Thirty artists are coming for Plein Air Litchfield, a week of painting outdoors, directly in front of whatever they’re painting. Their blank panels are stamped before they begin, so the work has to be made outside, on the spot.
What’s interesting is that painters have been doing this around Litchfield for more than 130 years.
In 1893, landscape painter Alexander Theobald Van Laer rented a barn on West Street in Litchfield and spent the summer painting the surrounding hills, farms and fields. He liked it enough that he came back every summer, eventually bought a house in town and retired here.
Van Laer also taught local painters, including Adelaide Deming, who grew up in Litchfield and became an accomplished watercolorist. She traveled and painted in Europe, Egypt and the Caribbean, but much of her best-known work was made here: back roads, fields, snowy farms and Litchfield at night.
This weekend, painters will be scattered around Litchfield, Warren, Morris, Goshen, Kent, Cornwall, Washington Depot and New Preston doing much the same thing.
And you can go watch them.
Plein Air Litchfield runs September 12–20. On Sunday, the Litchfield Historical Society is also giving a free 3 p.m. talk about Van Laer, Deming and another remarkable local painter, Emily Noyes Vanderpoel.
If you have $25 and your own paints, you can even join the Quick Paint around the Litchfield Green Sunday morning.
Wednesday the 9th
Litchfield Community Center, Litchfield – Live, Learn, Lunch: Katharine Hepburn, From Hartford to Hollywood. A talk on the actress and her lifelong ties to Connecticut, with lunch. 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM LEARN AT LUNCH
Warner Theatre, Torrington – Blackberry Smoke, the Georgia southern rock band, on their 25th anniversary tour. 7:30 PM HEAR THE BAND
Thursday the 10th
Judea Garden, New Preston – Weed & Wine Thursdays. Pull weeds in the community garden, then stay for a glass. 124 Christian Street. 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM PULL SOME WEEDS
Friday the 11th
Alain White Field, Bantam – The Bantam Community Farmers Market. 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM SHOP LOCAL
Kent Farmers Market, Kent – Growers and makers at the Welcome Center on Railroad Street. 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM SHOP THE MARKET
Woodbury Brewing Company, Woodbury – Iris Lies, live in the taproom. 8:30 PM HEAR THE BAND
Saturday the 12th
Cornwall Village Green, Cornwall – The Cornwall COOP Farmers Market on Pine Street. 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM SHOP THE GREEN
Litchfield Green, Litchfield – The 5th Connecticut Regiment reenactors camp on the West Green all day. At noon a small parade forms at the lower end of the West Green in front of Espresso 59, a rider on horseback and a drummer, possibly a fife and pipes, and walks up across North Street Extension to the Center Green. Around 12:30 the borough dedicates its new Revolutionary War monument. The Center Green has honored veterans of every war but that one. Free. 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM SEE THE DEDICATION
Cornwall Village Green, Cornwall – The Cornwall Ag Fair, the town's agricultural fair on the Green. The Green Tent brings together the Cornwall Conservation Trust, the Housatonic Valley Association, the Garden Club, Sustainable CT and Cornwall Energy. 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM GO TO THE FAIR
The Wish House, West Cornwall – The West Cornwall Farm Market. 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM MEET THE GROWERS
Flanders Nature Center, Woodbury – Autumn Foraging with The 3 Foragers. A slideshow, a walk through the woods around the Sugar House on Church Hill Road, then a tasting of what the season gives: nuts, fruit, roots, honey mushrooms, maitake. $21 for members, $26 otherwise. Call to register. 10:00 AM TASTE THE WILD
White Memorial Conservation Center, Litchfield – The Ron and Joan Jones Memorial Hike. Up the Laurel Hill Trail to Cat Swamp, then on to Apple Hill. Meet at the Laurel Hill parking area, 340 East Shore Road. Free, limited to 20, pre-register. 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM CLIMB APPLE HILL
Hopkins Vineyard, Warren – Live music with David Powers. 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM WINE AMONG THE VINES
White Memorial Conservation Center, Litchfield – Radical Raptors with Colleen Harrak. The hawks, owls, eagles and falcons of the northwest corner, with live birds in the room. Ages 8 and up. $5 for members, $10 otherwise, pre-register. 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM MEET THE RAPTORS
Cornwall Market, Cornwall Bridge – The Cornwall Music Bowl, the free concert series behind the market on Kent Road South, with One Time Weekend and On&On Radio. Doors at 5:00, music at 6:00. Oysters and drinks. 5:00 PM HEAR THE BANDS
Sunday the 13th
Tapping Reeve Meadow, Litchfield – The Plein Air Litchfield Quick Paint. Competition painters and anyone else who registers work the square mile around the Green from 9:00 to 11:00, then bring the wet canvases back to the meadow at 82 South Street for judging at 11:30. $25 to paint, free to watch. Plein Air Litchfield runs through September 20 with thirty painters working across the county. 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM WATCH THE PAINTERS
Litchfield History Museum, Litchfield – Artists of Litchfield walking tour. The historic district as painters and sketchers of the late 1800s and early 1900s saw it. Meet at 7 South Street. About an hour. Free, registration requested. 10:00 AM WALK THE DISTRICT
Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Kent – Coffee and conversation with artist Richard Klein, whose show The Naturalist is up in the gallery. 11:30 AM TALK WITH THE ARTIST
Hopkins Vineyard, Warren – Author Linda Avellar signs books from 1:00. The Scott Hargus Duo plays from 2:00. 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM WINE AMONG THE VINES
Gordon Hall, Music Mountain, Falls Village – The 97th season finale. The Juilliard String Quartet plays Beethoven's Opus 135, Bartók's Fourth and Dvořák's American Quartet at 3:00. Before that, at 2:00 on the Great Lawn, the Martha Graham Company performs Lamentation and Satyric Festival Song, two works from the early 1930s. 2:00 PM HEAR THE FINALE
Litchfield History Museum, Litchfield – Landscape Visions. Curator Nicole Carpenter on the painters who worked Litchfield's hills in the early 1900s: Theobald Van Laer, Adelaide Deming, A. Sheldon Pennoyer and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel. Free, registration requested. 3:00 PM HEAR THE TALK
Woodbury Brewing Company, Woodbury – The Michael Allman Band with special guest Greg Mattson. 5:00 PM HEAR THE BAND
Infinity Hall, Norfolk – Chris Knight, the Kentucky songwriter. 8:00 PM HEAR THE SONGS
Monday the 14th
White Memorial Conservation Center, Litchfield – Children's Free Week in the Museum begins. Through September 20, kids twelve and under get in free with an adult. The museum is closed Mondays, so the first day in is Tuesday. All week VISIT THE MUSEUM
Cornwall Conservation Trust, West Cornwall – Last open hours for Bridges Across the Housatonic, Woldemar Neufeld's watercolor and ink paintings of the river's bridges, made for the Bicentennial fifty years ago. 7 Railroad Street. 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM SEE THE BRIDGES
That is the week's cut. The full list, close to two hundred events across the county, is on the website.
A few poll respondents mentioned they didn’t know the Ledger was on Instagram! It is. Photographs of the county between issues, plus events that don’t make the newsletter.
Show your business to thousands of Litchfield locals. Email Patrick at patrick@litchfieldledger.com.
