Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when
American artists
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
began to paint
landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often dominated compositions by artists associated with the style. During the late 1890s, American art critics began to use the term "tonal" to describe these works, as well as the lesser-known synonyms Quietism and Intimism. Two of the leading associated painters were
George Inness
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent United States, American landscape painting, landscape painter.
Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced b ...
and
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
.
Tonalism is sometimes used to describe American landscapes derived from the French
Barbizon
Barbizon () is a commune (town) in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest.
Demographics
The inhabitants are called ''Barbizonais''.
Art history
The Barbizon school of painters is name ...
style, which emphasized mood and shadow.
Tonalism was eventually eclipsed by
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
and European
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
.
Australian Tonalism emerged as an
art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...
in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
during the 1910s.
Associated artists
*
Willis Seaver Adams
Willis Seaver Adams (1844–1921) was a landscape painter who studied under James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium and was part of the Tonalism movement, which took place in the late 19t ...
*
Joseph Allworthy
Joseph Allworthy (September 19, 1892 – August 17, 1991) was a prominent mid-twentieth-century American representational, tonal-realist painter based in Chicago, known for his still life compositions and portraits. He also did notable work in ...
*
Edward Mitchell Bannister
Edward Mitchell Bannister (November 2, 1828January 9, 1901) was an oil painter of the American Barbizon school. Born in Canada, he spent his adult life in New England in the United States. There, along with his wife Christiana Carteaux Bannist ...
*
Clarice Beckett
Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett (21 March 1887 – 7 July 1935) was an Australian artist and a key member of the Australian tonalist movement. Known for her subtle, misty landscapes of Melbourne and its suburbs, Beckett developed a personal style ...
*
Ralph Albert Blakelock
Ralph Albert Blakelock (October 15, 1847 – August 9, 1919) was a romanticist American painter known primarily for his landscape paintings related to the Tonalism movement.
Biography
Ralph Blakelock was born in New York City on October 15, 18 ...
*
Emanuele Cavalli
Emanuele Cavalli (1904–1981) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola Romana (Roman School). He was also a renowned photographer, who experimented with new techniques since the 1930s.
Biography
The son of Apulian la ...
*
Jean-Charles Cazin
Jean-Charles Cazin (25 May 1840 – 17 March 1901) was a French landscapist, museum curator and ceramicist.
Biography
The son of a well-known doctor, FJ Cazin (1788–1864), he was born at Samer, Pas-de-Calais. After studying in France, ...
*
Colin Colahan
Colin Cuthbert Orr Colahan (12 February 1897, Woodend, Victoria – 6 June 1987, Ventimiglia) was an Australian painter and sculptor. Educated at Xavier College.
Second youngest of the six children of Surgeon-Major-General John Joseph Aloys ...
*
Paul Cornoyer
Paul Cornoyer (1864–1923) was an American painter, currently best known for his popularly reproduced painting in an Impressionist, tonalist, and sometimes pointillist style.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Cornoyer began painting in Barbizon styl ...
*
Bruce Crane
Robert Bruce Crane (1857 – October 30, 1937) was an American painter. He joined the Lyme Art Colony in the early 1900s. His most active period, though, came after 1920, when for more than a decade he did oil sketches of woods, meadows, ...
*
Leon Dabo
Leon Dabo (July 9, 1864 – November 7, 1960) was an American tonalist landscape artist best known for his paintings of New York, particularly the Hudson Valley. His paintings were known for their feeling of spaciousness, with large areas of the ...
*
Elliott Daingerfield
Elliott Daingerfield (1859–1932) was an American artist who lived and worked in North Carolina. He is considered one of North Carolina's most prolific artists.Johnson, Lucille Miller (1992). ''Hometown Heritage, Volume II'', p 2-3. Taylor Publi ...
*
Angel De Cora
Angel De Cora Dietz (1871–1919) was a Winnebago painter, illustrator, Native American rights advocate, and teacher at Carlisle Indian School. She was a well-known Native American artist before World War I.
Background
Angel De Cora Dietz or H ...
*
Charles Melville Dewey
*
Thomas Dewing
Thomas Wilmer Dewing (May 4, 1851November 5, 1938) was an American painter working at the turn of the 20th century. Schooled in Paris, Dewing was noted for his figure paintings of aristocratic women. He was a founding member of the Ten America ...
*
Charles Warren Eaton
Charles Warren Eaton (1857–1937) was an American artist best known for his tonalist landscapes. He earned the nickname "the pine tree painter" for his numerous depictions of Eastern White Pine trees.
Youth
Eaton was born in Albany, New York, ...
*
Henry Farrer
Henry Farrer (March 23, 1844 – February 24, 1903) was an English-born American artist known for his tonalist watercolor landscapes and etchings.
Life
Farrer was born in London, the younger brother of artist Thomas Charles Farrer. Thomas ...
*
Edith Loring Getchell
*
Percy Gray
Henry Percy Gray (1869–1952) was an American painter. Gray was born on October 3, 1869 into a San Francisco family with broad literary and artistic tastes. He studied at the San Francisco School of Design and later under William Merritt Chase ...
*
L. Birge Harrison
Lovell Birge Harrison (October 28, 1854, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 1929) was an American genre and landscape painter, teacher, and writer. He was a prominent practitioner and advocate of Tonalism.
Life
Born in Philadelphia, Birge Harrison w ...
*
Arthur Hoeber
Arthur Hoeber (23 July 1854 New York City – 29 April 1915 Nutley, New Jersey) was a United States Painting, painter best known for his writing on art-related subjects.
Biography
He studied with James Carroll Beckwith at the Art Students League o ...
*
George Inness
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent United States, American landscape painting, landscape painter.
Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced b ...
*
William Keith
*
Percy Leason
Percy Alexander Leason (23 February 1889 – 11 September 1959) was an Australian political cartoonist and artist who was a major figure in the Australian tonalist movement. As a painter and commercial artist his works span two continents.
Ea ...
*
Xavier Martinez
Xavier or Xabier may refer to:
Place
* Xavier, Spain
People
* Xavier (surname)
* Xavier (given name)
* Francis Xavier (1506–1552), Catholic saint
** St. Francis Xavier (disambiguation)
* St. Xavier (disambiguation)
* Xavier (footballer, born ...
*
Arthur Frank Mathews
Arthur F. Mathews (October 1, 1860 – February 19, 1945) was an American Tonalist painter who was one of the founders of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Trained as an architect and artist, he and his wife Lucia Kleinhans Mathews had a s ...
*
Max Meldrum
Duncan Max Meldrum (3 December 1875 – 6 June 1955) was a Scottish-born Australian artist and art teacher, best known as the founder of Australian tonalism, a representational painting style that became popular in Melbourne during the interwa ...
*
Robert Crannell Minor
Robert Crannell Minor (1839–1904), American artist, was born in New York City on April 30, 1839. His father, Israel Minor, was a merchant who made a large fortune in the pharmaceutical business. As a young man, Robert Minor worked as a bookkeep ...
*
John Francis Murphy
John Francis Murphy (December 11, 1853 – January 30, 1921) was an American Irish landscape painter. His style moved from poetic Tonalism to the innovative application of multiple layers of pigment, in order to create a sparse, brooding lands ...
*
Frank Nuderscher
Frank Bernard Nuderscher (July 19, 1880 – October 7, 1959) was an American Illustration, illustrator, muralist, and Painting, painter of the American Impressionism style. He was called the "dean of St. Louis, Missouri, St. Louis artists" ...
*
Fausto Pirandello
Fausto Calogero Pirandello (17 June 1899 – 30 November 1975) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the ''Scuola romana (Roman School)''. He was the son of Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello.
Biography
After a short experience ...
*
Henry Ward Ranger
Henry Ward Ranger (January 29, 1858 – November 7, 1916) was an American artist. Born in western New York State, he was a prominent landscape and marine painter, an important Tonalist, and the leader of the Old Lyme Art Colony. Ranger became a N ...
*
Granville Redmond
Granville Richard Seymour Redmond (March 9, 1871 – May 24, 1935) was an American landscape painter and exponent of Tonalism and California Impressionism. He was also an occasional actor for his friend Charlie Chaplin.
Early years
Re ...
*
Albert Pinkham Ryder
Albert Pinkham Ryder (March 19, 1847 – March 28, 1917) was an American painter best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality. While his art shared an emphasis on subtle variations of ...
*
William Sartain
William Sartain (November 21, 1843 – October 25, 1924) was an American artist, known for the moody tonalism of his paintings, and interests and influences that spanned Orientalism and the Barbizon plein air approach to art. Friend to Thomas ...
*
Edward Steichen
Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography.
Steichen was credited with tr ...
*
Dwight William Tryon
Dwight William Tryon (August 13, 1849 – July 1, 1925) was an American landscape painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work was influenced by James McNeill Whistler, and he is best known for his landscapes and seascapes pain ...
*
John Twachtman
John Henry Twachtman (August 4, 1853 – August 8, 1902) was an American painter best known for his impressionist landscapes, though his painting style varied widely through his career. Art historians consider Twachtman's style of American Impr ...
*
Clark Greenwood Voorhees
*
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
*
Alexander Helwig Wyant
Alexander Helwig Wyant (January 11, 1836November 29, 1892) was an American landscape painter. His early works belonged to the Hudson River School, with its direct pastoral narrative, but evolved into the more moody and shadowy Tonalism. After a s ...
*
Raymond Dabb Yelland
Raymond Dabb Yelland (1848 -1900) was an American landscape painter and art instructor. Born Raymond Dabb in London, he came to the United States in 1850 as a young child, and was raised in Union, New Jersey, and later lived in neighboring Elizab ...
Gallery
Image:Albert Pinkham Ryder 004.jpg, Albert Pinkham Ryder
Albert Pinkham Ryder (March 19, 1847 – March 28, 1917) was an American painter best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality. While his art shared an emphasis on subtle variations of ...
, ''Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens'' (1888 - 1891), National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
, Washington, DC
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...
Image:George Inness 002.jpg, George Inness
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent United States, American landscape painting, landscape painter.
Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced b ...
, Summer Landscape, 1894
Image:John H. Twachtman 001.jpg, John H. Twachtman, ''The White Bridge'', c. 1895, Minneapolis Institute of Arts
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...
File:Dabo - The Seashore.jpg, Leon Dabo
Leon Dabo (July 9, 1864 – November 7, 1960) was an American tonalist landscape artist best known for his paintings of New York, particularly the Hudson Valley. His paintings were known for their feeling of spaciousness, with large areas of the ...
, ''The Seashore'', c. 1900; Oil on masonite; 76.8 x 86.4 cm
File:John Francis Murphy landscape.png, John Francis Murphy
John Francis Murphy (December 11, 1853 – January 30, 1921) was an American Irish landscape painter. His style moved from poetic Tonalism to the innovative application of multiple layers of pigment, in order to create a sparse, brooding lands ...
, Brooding New York landscape, c. 1900
See also
*
California Tonalism California Tonalism was art movement that existed in California from circa 1890 to 1920. Tonalist are usually intimate works, painted with a limited palette. Tonalism, Tonalist paintings are softly expressive, suggestive rather than detailed, oft ...
*
Australian Tonalism
Notes
External links
*
American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art', a fully digitized 3 volume exhibition catalog
-
Montclair Art Museum
The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) is located in Montclair, New Jersey, United States, a few miles west of New York City. Since it opened in 1914 as the first museum in New Jersey that granted access to the public and the first dedicated solely to a ...
{{Western art movements
Art movements
Tonalism
Impressionism
American art movements