William Keith

"Western Wilderness Interior" William Keith, California Tonalist, Forest Stream

Charles Warren Eaton (1857 – 1937) The Shadow of Mount Rockwell, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1921 Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches Signed lower right: CHAS WARREN EATON. Provenance: The artist The Macbeth Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby's New York, American Art, April 14, 1989 ConocoPhillips, Houston Simpson Galleries, Houston, Fine Art & Antiques, May 18, 2019, Lot 447 Exhibited: New York, The Macbeth Gallery, Paintings of Glacier National Park by Charles Warren Eaton, December 13, 1921 - January 2, 1922, no. 2. Literature: "Two Exhibitions at Macbeth's," American Art News, New York, Vol. XX, No. 10, December 17, 1921. A contemporary critic wrote that the paintings of Charles Warren Eaton appeal to “the dreamers who find in them the undiscovered scenes in which their fancy long has dwelt.” Eaton’s contemplative landscapes exude a spiritual quality that moves the observer into a similar frame of mind. He loved to depict the ethereal light of dawn and dusk in late autumn or winter, usually without any reference to human or animal figures or buildings. These Tonalist paintings, with their subdued palette and relatively intimate scale, marked a definite break with the fading popularity of the panoramic and romantic views of the Hudson River School painters. Charles Warren Eaton was born in Albany, New York to a family of limited means. He began painting while working in a dry-goods store. At age 22, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York City and then studied figure painting at the Art Students League. By 1886, he was successful enough to quit his day job and make a living as a landscape painter. That year, he traveled to Europe with fellow Tonalist painters Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster. In France, Eaton visited popular artist’s spots such as Paris, Fontainebleau and Grez-sur-Loing, and fell in love with the loose brushwork and moody style of French Barbizon painting. Returning to the United States, Eaton fell under the spell of George Inness, the foremost exponent of Barbizon style in the United States. In 1888, Eaton settled near Inness in Bloomfield, New Jersey, where Eaton lived until his death in 1937. In this period, he painted shadowy and ambiguous landscapes inspired by rural scenery in the northeastern United States. His signature theme was a cropped view of the branches, trunks, and foliage of a pine grove silhouetted against a delicately illuminated sunset or moonlit sky. He painted this vision so often between 1900 and 1910 that he picked up the sobriquet ‘‘The Pine Tree Painter.” After 1910, Eaton responded to the popularity of Impressionism by using brighter colors and painting sunlit daytime scenes. In 1921, he was hired to paint Glacier Lake, in Glacier National Park by the Great Northern Railroad Company as part of their ‘See America First’ campaign. He produced more than 20 paintings, among the artist's last works, that now poignantly remind viewers of the vast disappearing glaciers. Eaton tended to approach this mountain scenery from an oblique vantage point; he liked to capture small episodes, showing mountaintops nearly obscured by dramatically attenuated screens of fir trees. Eaton, like many Tonalist artists of his generation such as Henry Ward Ranger, John Francis Murphy, and Charles Melville Dewey...

John F. Carlson Forest Landscape, circa 1925 Signed lower right Watercolor on paper Sight 21 x 24 1/2 inches The native Swede John Fabian Carlson became a household name in New Yor...

George Henry Smillie Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite Valley, 1871 Signed and inscribed board verso "Cathedral Rocks-Morning-Yo-semite Valley Aug. 71 Geo. H. Smillie", also inscribed "Yo-se...

John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) Saratoga, 1876 Graphite on paper Sight 8 3/4 x 10 1/2 inches Titled and dated to lower right Provenance: Babcock Galleries, New York Spanierman Gallery, New York In his lifetime, John Francis Murphy (1853-1921) was known as “the American Corot.” He was renowned for his small, intimate views of nature, especially barren fields and farms, bare trees, and lonely marshland. More than a century later, the power of Murphy’s landscapes has not waned. One contemporary critic wrote, “It was Murphy’s unique accomplishment to achieve an absolute realism without a loss of that mystic, indefinable quality which transfigures realism.” John Francis Murphy was born at Oswego, NY in 1853 but his family moved to Chicago in 1868 where he worked painting theater sets. Murphy was basically a self-taught artist; his only formal training was a few weeks of instruction at the Chicago Academy of Design. In 1875, Murphy moved from Chicago to New York, eventually rooming with the painters Dennis Bunker and Bruce Crane above a bakery shop. Murphy’s early work was typical of the Hudson River school but he soon fell under the sway of the loose brushwork and moody style of French Barbizon painting...

Late 19th Century Tonalist Rocky Mountain High Camp Landscape Wonderful 19th Century tonalist painting of Flat Top Mountain in the Rocky Mountains by unknown artist (American, late ...

Winter Retreat was done on one of Marty Rick's many trips to Idaho and Montana. It is oil on canvas and is 24x 24 Marty Ricks is known for his Tonalism paintings that have been done...

Early 20th Century California Tonalist Oil Landscape "Showers, The Lower San Joaquin River, California" by James Everett Stuart, 1909. This stellar tonalist oil painting by James E...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork. Signed and dated lower left. John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) John Francis Murphy is increasingly recognized today as one o...