Chatterton (1880–1973) was an American artist whose oils, watercolors, and gouaches, painted in realist style, showed the houses and streets of villages, towns, and harbors of upstate New York and the Maine coast.

One of them praised his "power to find in narrow streets with trolley cars and railway culverts something stimulating in design and warm with a sense of human living.

[3][note 1] While he was in the elementary grades he obtained grudging approval from his father to attend art classes taught by the artist, Lydia Edgar, in nearby Middletown on the understanding that he would draw and paint as a hobby.

[5]: 32 [6] [note 2] Shortly after approving the classes Chatterton's father died of consumption, leaving an estate large enough to support the remaining family members.

[5]: 32  In 1900 he enrolled in the New York School of Art where Howard Chandler Christy and Walter Appleton Clark taught classes in illustration.

"[13] At first Chatterton's painting instructors William Merritt Chase, Frank DuMond, Luis Mora, and Kenneth Hayes Miller.

[15][16] Leaving the New York School in 1904, Chatterton returned to Newburgh where he lived with his widowed mother and worked out of a studio that he shared with Gifford Beal.

In 1908 a painting of his called "Snow Clad Town" appeared first in a juried group exhibition at the National Academy of Design and later as part of a traveling exposition held in Argentina and Chile.

[5]: 33 [note 6] When a painting of his called "A Peep at the Side Show" was included in an exhibition by the American Watercolor Society in 1912, the critic for the New York Herald described it in detail and said it was "a good picture of a not uncommon scene in the rural districts in spring and summer.

[5]: 34  Early on, he spent summer holidays in a rented studio in Newburgh where he made large paintings of the city's street scenes.

Where before he mostly painted street and harbor scenes on the Hudson River in the vicinity of Newburgh, he now began to find subjects in the villages on the coast of southern Maine.

When it was shown in 1927, Margaret Breuning of the New York Evening Post said "'Henry Weare's Place' with its beautiful elm, and umbrageous fountain spreading its beneficence over the little frame house huddling close to its great trunk, reveals the newer, mellower vein that this artist is developing with no loss of power in statement or design.

[27][28][note 8][5]: 34 [19] When Wildenstein gave him a second solo exhibition in 1927 Margaret Breuning said his works were ""stimulating in design and warm with a sense of human living"[1] A critic for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle added, "What Edward Hopper has done for the mansard roof of architecture of the 80's, Chatterton has accomplished for the early American homestead.

[note 10] Although he stopped showing in commercial galleries after Macbeth's death in 1940, his work continued to be shown in noncommercial exhibitions in New York and across the country.

In 1936 he was one of 40 artists chosen to represent New York City in a national exhibition of American art that was held in the newly completed International Building of Rockefeller Center.

George Chapellier, owner of the gallery that bore his name, gave Chatterton a solo exhibition consisting of 50 paintings and drawings dating from 1899 to 1958.

[5]: 33  Early in his career a critic praised Chatterton for his "fresh vision of the world, his power to find in narrow streets with trolley cars and railway culverts something stimulating in design and warm with a sense of human living" and credited him with the "power to impose formal discipline upon the most refractory of factual motifs and give them coherent harmony of organization and relevance.

"[1] Another said he possessed a strong, forthright technique and praised his sentiment of place, taking "the white houses, the tall elms and dusty streets of New England towns as the important things in a picture.

"[55] Writing in 1934 of that year's solo exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery, the critic for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted this sense of place and said Chatterton's point of view was "characterized by certain serene enjoyment of actualities that amounts almost to a philosophy of life."

In 1915, against advice from his New York friends but with encouragement from Robert Henri, he took a job as artist-in-residence at Vassar College and in the same year was appointed superintendent of art education in Newburgh public schools.