Lost colony: artists of st. augustine

A gathering of artists in St. Augustine, Florida on the north coast of Florida, just off the Atlantic Ocean, the city was settled by a Spanish explorer in 1565. It is picturesque and provided a place of escape for American artists from urban chaos. Martin Johnson Heade, a famous American painter, led the way in 1883. Then several years later in 1887, the luxurious Hotel Ponce de Leon and other smaller, quaint hotels attracted so many people that St. Augustine was called the "Newport of the South". Henry Flagler, builder of the Ponce de Leon, erected a long building with artist studios on the grounds as an added attraction, and throughout most of the 1890s, artists lived and worked for periods of time in the city. However, in the late 1890s, the city experienced economic decline, and tourists as well as Flagler moved farther south. Other artists associated with the Colony are Reynolds Beal, Arthur Diehl, Charles Hawthorne, Harry L. Hoffman, and Henrich Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer was a latecomer who first arrived in 1920, and by then, according to him the art scene "had just about disappeared".Source: Robert Wilson Torchia, "Lost Colony: The Artists of St. Augustine, 1930-1950", from Resource Library Magazine, Traditional Fine Arts on Line.