Charles Warren Eaton

He moved to New York City in 1879 to work during the day and attend classes at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League at night.

In the late 1870s the highly realistic and detailed Hudson River School manner, which had dominated the American art scene for over forty years, was giving way to a much looser, moodier style that younger artists were bringing home from Europe.

This new style, which would later come to be known as tonalism, emphasized low-key colors and tended to depict intimate settings rather than scenes of grandeur.

Eaton adopted this new style in New York and became friends with two other tonalist artists, Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster.

He also exhibited with the newly formed Society of American Artists in 1884 with an uncharacteristic still-life (Eaton painted landscapes nearly exclusively).

The first subject, tonalist in style, was a landscape typically containing pasture, trees and sometimes a small patch of water or stone fence.

The second subject, more stately in manner, was a landscape with a grouping of tall pine trees, often backlit with the glow of a setting sun.

Despite his success with tonalism, Eaton gradually discarded the shadowy tonalist style and began painting with brighter colors, especially after 1910.

[1] His works, like many artists of his generation, were nearly forgotten for decades until a resurgence of interest in the late twentieth century.