Charles Warren Eaton Paintings

Charles Warren Eaton Autumn, New England Signed lower right Oil on canvas 30 x 36 inches Provenance Private Collection, Connecticut A contemporary critic wrote that the paintings o...

Signed lower right. Charles Warren Eaton will be remembered in American art history as one of the chief members of the Tonalist movement, along with Henry Ward Ranger, Elliott Daingerfield, and others who benefited from the lessons of French Barbizon painting and, more immediately, from the example of the poetic style of George Inness. Guided by his desire to convey the underlying moods of nature, he eschewed grandiose vistas in favor of quieter, more intimate views, which he depicted at dawn or dusk. His landscapes still speak to us in a quiet but consistent way of the beauty of nature and of those unexpected and felicitous moments when the man-made and natural worlds merge into unified and harmonious images. Eaton was born in 1857 in Albany, New York, into modest circumstances. According to legend, he became interested in art when a childhood friend in Albany showed him his own tentative efforts. In 1879 Eaton moved to New York, where he supported himself as a dry-goods clerk and enrolled at both the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. His constant search for a suitable studio led him to move frequently during his first ten years in the city. There is evidence he may have roomed with his Albany friend Leonard Ochtman prior to 1880, and he later shared a studio with painter Ben Foster...

Charles Warren Eaton (1857 - 1937) Summer Landscape Oil on canvas 18 x 16 inches Signed lower right Born in Albany, New York, Charles Eaton became a Tonalist landscape painter much influenced by George Inness. His intimate, moody landscapes were known for subdued golden-brown hues and muted tonal harmonies, and the subject was often the landscape in late autumn, evening time, or winter. These paintings were groundbreaking because they were relatively small in scale and intimate countryside views, which was a departure from the generally popular panoramic, romanticized views of Hudson River School painters. In 1879, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York City and then studied figure painting at the Art Students League with J. Carroll Beckwith. He became a close associate with Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster...

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...

Impressionist sunset landscape by Charles Warren Eaton (1857 - 1937). Oil on canvas, circa 1900. Signed lower right. Displayed in a giltwood frame. Image size, 16"L x 12"H, over...

Landscape