Clark Voorhees Folk Art

Clark Greenwood Voorhees was an American Impressionist and Tonalist landscape painter and one of the founders of the Old Lyme Art Colony. He was initially drawn to the sciences and earned degrees in Chemistry from Yale and Columbia Universities. In 1894, Voorhees began to seriously pursue fine art when he enrolled in classes at the Art Students League. The following year, Voorhees enrolled at the Metropolitan School of Fine Art. He also studied with Irving Ramsey Wiles on Long Island and with Leonard Ochtman in Connecticut. In 1897, Voorhees traveled to Europe, studying with Benjamin Constant and J. P. Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris and spending time in the French village of Barbizon as well as in the Netherlands. He was awarded a bronze medal at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition and received one of the National Academy's three Hallgarten Prizes, honoring the best three oil paintings produced in the United States in 1905.