Just as upwardly mobile Americans, from 1890 to 1925, sought to escape the vicissitudes of the city for sun-drenched, rural settings, so too did our artists, both in terms of subject matter and places to establish their homes and studios.

Comprised of more than 30 canvases borrowed from museums and private collections, as well as works from the Griswold's own trove, "Visions of Home: American Impressionist Images of Suburban Leisure and County Comfort" is a sumptuous feast not to missed by fans of American Impressionism. Organized by Lisa N. Peters, director of research at Spanierman Gallery in New York City, and Peter Lukehart, curator of the Trout Gallery of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. (where the show opened), the exhibition continues in picturesque Old Lyme through September 28.

The works on view are placed in context by an excellent, fully illustrated, 150-page catalogue, with useful essays by Peters, Franklin & Marshall College American Studies professor David Schuyler, and old-fashioned garden authority May Brawley Hill. Insightful entries by Jack Becker, Carol Lowery and Peters accompany each painting.

Artists and writers, the catalogue underscores, were key figures in shaping American attitudes about the shortcomings of urban life and the attraction of suburban and country living a century ago. Decrying the grim congestion and hectic pace of life in cities, popular publications of the day promoted the virtues of country living: one could be surrounded by nature in settings evoking a sense of freedom, privacy, informality and good health. New modes of transportation, particularly the railroad, facilitated access to suburban and resort communities.

Building on nostalgia for a simpler past engendered by observance of the nation's centennial in 1876, advocates of country living encouraged acquisition of farmhouses and old salt box dwellings, which epitomized American values that seemed to be slipping away in a rapidly changing modern world.

Emphasis was placed on harmonizing county houses with their surroundings. Echoing ideas promulgated a half century before by Andrew Jackson Downing in Cottage Residences (1842), advocates suggested joining home and land by means of porches covered with vine trellises, decorating doorways with arbors and floral plantings, allowing flowering bushes to flourish freely, and bringing the garden directly up to the house itself.

One of the best ways to wed the dwelling to its site was through development of old-fashioned gardens -- "like grandmother's" -- featuring hardy perennials exploding in lively profusion. Such a plot formed a pleasing intermediary between the controlled life of the home and the freedom of surrounding nature.

American painters joined the exodus from cities, at least in the summer, making country and resort scenes major elements in their work. While their brushwork and plein air technique were inspired by the examples of their French counterparts, our Impressionists sought out places filled with specific personal meaning, often occupying homes and working in studios that established an organic relationship to their natural surroundings. They gloried in cultivating heirloom plants and wildflowers in free-flowing "grandmother's" gardens that were riots of scintillating color.

"Impressionist representations of the garden created the image of separate space devoted to leisure, a landscape as divorced from the realities of productive labor as the suburban community or rural village was from the downtown business district or tenement neighborhoods," writes Schuyler in the catalogue.

Most of these artists had studied in France or elsewhere in Europe, and on their return they sought out quintessentially American subject matter. Whereas cabins in clearings, the sublime wilderness and grand scenery had been featured by their predecessors associated with the Hudson River School, these cosmopolitan returnees looked for older, settled town and country locations, filled with history and often seemingly frozen in time. As painters of shimmering light and optimistic scenes, American Impressionists were ideally suited to record the nation's changing city-country relationships.

Seduced by the charms of coastal New England, eastern Long Island and rural Connecticut and Pennsylvania, our Impressionists homed in on dazzling gardens, verdant landscapes and country cottages of a bygone day, as enhanced by escapees from the urban rat race. Thus, William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam settled on Long Island (the former in Shinnecock and the latter in East Hampton), while John H. Twachtman and Alden Weir chose Greenwich and Branchville, Conn., and Daniel Garber and Edward W. Redfield moved to the New Hope, Pa. area.

Fittingly, a sizable number of Impressionists congregated in the picture-perfect colonial village of Old Lyme. Many stayed there at the boarding house of Miss Florence Griswold, the structure hosting the current exhibition. Later, a number of these artists bought homes of their own around the historic town.

Instead of the grand mansions favored by Hudson River School titans, American Impressionists tended to occupy more modest, older dwellings in scenic locations, as their summer retreats or year-round abodes.

Among the highlights in an exhibition filled with standout canvases are two relatively unheralded masterpieces of American Impressionism: Philip Leslie Hale's gorgeous "Crimson Rambler" (circa 1908) and William Chadwick's splendid "On the Porch" (circa 1908-1910). They epitomize the Impressionists' affinity for depicting places of repose and leisure, "where that harmonious middle ground between the conveniences of city life and the quietude and fresh country air was achieved," as Peters writes in the catalogue.

Hale (1865-1931), son of eminent Boston clergyman Edward Everett Hale, studied in France before launching a career notable for its decorative and artful paintings of female figures. After marrying talented artist Lillian Wescott, they bought an old house, "Ashcroft," in suburban Dedham, replete with several porches and a garden featuring red roses.

In this spectacular image, Hale posed a lovely young woman on a sunlit porch of "Ashcroft" next to a climbing rosebush bursting with crimson blooms. A staple of flower gardens of the period, these vibrant blossoms were specifically championed by contemporary tastemakers.

British-born Chadwick (1879-1962) studied at the Art Students League, and stayed for years at the Griswold boarding house before purchasing a home in Old Lyme. His evocative studio, maintained as it looked in the artist's heyday, has been moved to the grounds of the Griswold Museum, and is a highlight of visits to the site.

Chadwick's masterpiece, portraying a solitary, elegant woman seated at a table on a side porch, emphasizes the pastoral setting of the Griswold mansion. Beyond the trellis, grapevines and multitude of flowers growing in Miss Florence's old-fashioned garden loom the barns where Hassam and others had their studios. Chadwick's lush Impressionist palette brings the colorful scene to life, making "On the Porch" at once a tribute to feminine beauty, the comfort of the Griswold hostelry and the joys of life amidst flowers and nature. This scintillating canvas is a prized possession of the Griswold Museum.

Another long-time resident of the Griswold home and an active member of the Old Lyme art colony, Frank A. Bicknell (1866-1943) captured the abundant, informal, wild beauty of the floral bonanza around the old house in "Miss Florence Griswold's Garden, Old Lyme, Connecticut" (circa 1910s).

Inspired by sojourns in Claude Monet's Giverny, Edmund W. Greacen (1876-1949) became an expert on "garden portraits," including a series depicting the colorful plantings around the Griswold mansion, where he often stayed. In "The Old Garden" (circa 1912), Greacen employed a somewhat muted palette to suggest the grand array of daylilies, delphiniums, phlox and other blooms which made the Griswold garden as old fashioned as the ample, colonial house.

Frank W. Benson (1862-1951), a stalwart of the Boston School, specialized in sunny portrayals of his wife and daughters, invariably in pristine white dresses, relaxing outdoors at their summer home on North Haven Island, off mid-coastal Maine. In keeping with recommendations of books and journals of the day, Benson added an expansive porch with a large bench to his Colonial-era house overlooking the water; it became an outdoor studio where he painted family members.

"Afternoon in September" (1913) shows the artist's daughters reading and sewing on the porch, in an appealing paen to good health, fresh air and leisurely island living. William Howe Downes, the eminent critic, called Benson's idealizations of his family in glorious outdoor settings "visions of the free life in the open air with figures of gracious women and lovely children, in a landscape drenched in sweet sunlight.... It is a holiday world in which nothing ugly or harsh enters."

Veneration for older houses was much in evidence in the art of the Impressionists, particularly that of their most popular representative, Hassam (1859-1935). Well known for his views of Boston, New England resort communities and flag-draped Manhattan streets, he also had a great affinity for whitewashed New England colonial churches and venerable dwellings.

After moving to East Hampton, Hassam created a number of evocative paintings recording the town's weathered shingled cottages, such as "Little Old Cottage, Egypt Lane, East Hampton" (1917) and "East Hampton House (Old Mumford House)" (1919). Each emphasizes the quirky, nostalgic charm of the aging structures and suggests their kinship to the land which they occupy.

A structure still extant is Chase's Colonial Revival, shingle-style home, designed by Stanford White, in Shinnecock on Long Island. The handsome dwelling served as a backdrop for a memorable series Chase (1849-1916) executed of that sand-duned area, often featuring his children.

In "Chase Homestead, Shinnecock (Summer House and Studio)" (circa 1892), he showed his daughter picking wildflowers in the sandy foreground, while behind her the house, with gambrel roof and dormer windows, seems to grow out of the scrubby landscape. There is little to suggest the lively activity that took place inside, where Chase maintained a studio and interacted with his young children.

Another Long Island landmark, "The Studio," painter Thomas Moran's gray-shingled, hipped-roofed Queen Anne-style house, was immortalized by California Impressionist Theodore Wores in "Thomas Moran's House, East Hampton" (circa 1890s). This doubly evocative canvas, where the great artist of the American West and his artist wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, lived, from 1882-1922, suggests how abundant trees, hedges and flowers combined to connect the dwelling to its site and protect it from public view. Wores (1858-1939) fully captured what one observer termed the "mellowed charm" of the picturesque setting, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Later, back in California, Wores utilized animated brushstrokes and bright colors to depict his Mission revival home/studio and its lively, free-form garden, in "Home and Garden, Saratoga" (circa 1926-1931).

The most unusual, even exotic, structure in the exhibition is Laurelton Hall, centerpiece of the famed Long Island estate of painter/designer Louis Comfort Tiffany. "Tiffany's Estate, Laurelton" (circa 1910s-1920s), by Charles W. Hawthorne, suggests the eclectic Moorish and Mission architecture, minaret, stucco walls, green lawn and pool which made the building much admired in its day. A tour de force of color harmonies and integrated house and landscape designs, Tiffany's showplace overlooking Cold Spring Harbor burned down in 1957.

The low vantage point adopted by Clark Voorhees in "In My Garden" (circa 1914) emphasized the manner in which a profusion of blooms and plants swelled upward to embrace his old saltbox house, linking the dwelling to its natural surroundings, as writers on the home recommended. Amongst the colorful flowers, a child reaches for a bloom, underscoring the privacy and security offered by this seemingly natural but carefully controlled environment.

Voorhees (1871-1933) was a long-time resident of Old Lyme and an active participant in the art colony that flourished there early in the Twentieth Century.

Included in the exhibition are works by two leading members of the Pennsylvania Impressionists: Garber and Redfield. Talented artists clustered around New Hope in Bucks County, the distinctive work of this group has recently been gaining renewed attention and appreciation.

Nature-loving Redfield (1869-1965) settled in Center Bridge, where he restored an old stone house on the tow path. The leading figure in the New Hope School of artists, he painted with vigor and directness, specializing in winter scenes, such as "Hillside at Center Bridge" (1904). During summers in Maine, he created lively, sunddrenched canvases of Boothbay Harbor and Monhegan Island.

Other artists represented in the exhibition include Robert Blum, Hugh H. Breckenridge, Dennis Miller Bunker, George Burr, William de Leftwich Dodge, Roger Donoho, Lydia Field Emmet, Abbott Graves, Ernest Lawson and Everett L. Warner.

Several of the paintings on view, such as those by Chase, Garber, Twachtman, Weir and Wores, depict country homes/studios of important artists that remain intact today. Retaining the serenity, beauty and rejuvenating outdoor qualities that attracted the Impressionists a century ago, they offer a chance to see their home surroundings, and suggest the need for concerted efforts to preserve and maintain these places where significant artists lived and worked. Unfortunately, only the Weir farm is guaranteed protection; it is the sole painter's property in the National Park system.

The softcover catalogue is published by the University Press of New England. The exhibition is supported by a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council, with additional funding from the Connecticut Department of Economic Development.

The Florence Griswold Museum, at 96 Lyme Street, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday, 1 to 5 pm. Admission is $4. The museum will sponsor an all-day symposium on September 13 featuring important scholars in the fields of American art and history. Call 860/434-5542 for information or to register.