Hoffman’s Harvest Moon Walk is a masquerade picnic where revelers dress as vegetables.
According to the Griswold Museum, “Hoffman’s eccentric depiction of strangely clad figures captures one of the Lyme Art Colony’s most festive rituals. On an October evening, merrymakers arrived at Florence Griswold’s house imaginatively costumed as fruits and vegetables. The marchers, a mix of artists and townspeople, formed a motley procession. They lit Japanese lanterns and paraded through Old Lyme, accompanied by a band. Once they reached the top of Chadwick Hill, bonfires were ignited, and the revelers danced and picnicked by the light of the harvest moon. Although it is not known precisely which year’s procession Hoffman pictures in Harvest Moon Walk, a 1916 newspaper describes the costumes of several past and present residents of the boardinghouse: Miss Florence Griswold, string bean; H.R. Poore, “dead beet;” Clark Voorhees, lettuce; Mrs. Voorhees and Mrs. DuMond, aster; Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hoffman, Dutch tulips. Taking stock of these frequent diversions, including foot races and picnics, Lillian Baynes Griffin, the wife of artist Walter Griffin, announced to the readers of a newspaper article about the colony, “Art is Forgot at Lyme.”
See Harry Hoffman. Harvest Moon Walk (1912 c.) The Florence Griswold Museum. Old Lyme, CT