I‘m currently yearning for the itching of grass on my bare legs, for that awful predicament of having nothing to do but lounge around in the sun all day until I think to myself: “maybe I could take up painting for the summer”. This photostory I found buried in the LIFE Archives, labelled “Saugatuck Art Colony, 1949”, photographed by the legendary Loomis Dean, is that. Summer longing…
Saugatuck is a small lakeside town in Michigan with a population of around 925. It has been linked with painters and sculptors since 1910, when the Art Institute of Chicago opened an artists’ camp there. More recently, the former artists’ colony of Saugatuck has become a premier Michigan resort destination, compared to as the “Cape Cod of the West”. Loomis Dean’s photostory follows a summer school of painting that probably no longer is exists, but for a brief moment in 1949, it looked like an artist’s paradise…
Find the full story on LIFE Archives.