He studied at the Art Students League with James Carroll Beckwith, Kenyon Cox and J. Alden Weir, and under William Merritt Chase from 1884 to 1886.

Butler signed the register under number 11 at Hotel Baudy in 1888 (May 20 – September 1888) along with Theodore Wendel, an Ohioan who also studied at Academy Julian.

At Hotel Baudy, artists could buy canvases from Lefevre Foinet and American food celebrating Thanksgiving was served.

According to Terra Museum historians Katherine M. Bourguignon and Vanessa Lecomte, over 350 painters from eighteen countries painted in Giverny.

An exhibition of foreign artists including Butler, Meteyard, Fox, Dice, Stasburg and Dawson Watson was organized from January 31, 1892 to February 1892.

Frequent showers, champagne and gaiety … Dinner and evening at the Monet's – bride and groom left at 7:3 for the Paris train.

The Butler family organized many dinners such as one held October 25, 1892 with Robinson, Hale, Hart and Marthe Hoschedé.

Butler developed his own impressionist style with light palettes and loose brushstrokes, reminiscent of works done by Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard.

From his garden he painted landscapes showing the church of Giverny, The Demoiselles (small haystacks) and the grain stacks.

A letter from Henry Prellwitz to Philip Leslie Hale indicated that Hart told him that Butler will sail on September 16 on La Touraine.

A critic wrote: Mr. Butler moves in another sphere from common folk, and his retina must have a peculiar faculty for chromatic analysis ...

Claude Monet, the great luminarist, who proved at least to the world the reasonableness of his artistic conceptions may not be proud of his Giverny pupil who should rub up against some of his own American trees and get down out of the clouds.

[7] From the time of his first marriage and after the birth of his children, Butler concentrated especially on domestic subjects, painted indoors or in his garden.

[9] Equally noticeable in Butler's brushwork are qualities that align him with the work of Paul Gauguin and the Nabis artists.

[9] In his later work Butler experimented further with Fauve principles, painting landscapes in Giverny and on the Normandy coast, sometimes applying color directly from the tube to decorative ends.