Biography from Art Cellar Exchange:
| CHARLES W. EATON | Tall Pines and Sweeping Meadows
The American landscape artist, Charles Warren Eaton, remains one of the
best kept secrets of the art market. Although his works are
included in many public collections across the United States including
the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the
Brooklyn Museum, Butler Institute of American Art, and the Cincinnati
Art Museum, he is virtually an unknown except to the savviest of
collectors.
The reason for this is in part due to the fact that he did not work for
the last ten years of his life, or that he began painting much later in
his life than most artists. Perhaps, the larger picture is that
throughout the last century his works have remained tucked away in the
exclusive private collections of the descendants of the original Eaton
admirers and have only begun to re-enter the art market over the last
decade or so.
The owner of the paintings presented on this website is the daughter of
one such pair of admirers. Her parents originally purchased their
works back in the 1920s. Her father was a passionate collector of
fine art and purchased many fine American paintings. He enjoyed
meeting the artists themselves and often went to their studios to
engage in conversation with the artists, to view works in process, and
often to purchase finished pieces from the studio floor long before
they entered a gallery. He was introduced to Charles Warren Eaton
sometime before Eaton's death in 1937 and visited him in his
studio. Her father fell in love with Eaton's works but did not
purchase any paintings due to his financial circumstances.
Some years later, the owner's father on one his frequents trips to the
Metropolitan Museum in New York City, he looked through the window of
the Kennedy Gallery and observed four small paintings that immediately
caught his eye. He stopped at the Kennedy Gallery and inquired
about the works. Recalling his meeting with Eaton and admiration
for his work, he did not hesitate to purchase all four paintings.
In no time at all, he sauntered down the streets with his new pride and
joy: four original Charles Warren Eaton paintings. His daughter
inherited these four paintings and has proudly hung them on the walls
of her home over the last 40 years.
"Chas Eaton" was how this native New Yorker signed his
paintings. He was born in 1857 and died in 1937. It was in
his early 20's that Charles began to feel so drawn to art that he quit
his job and immediately enrolled himself in Art School. He began
his studies with the Art Student League followed by the National
Academy of Design. He traveled across Europe visiting the museums and
countrysides that inspired the greatest artists of the last
millennium. Immediately upon his return he became acquainted with
another famous American landscape painter, George Inness. Inness
and Eaton would quickly become friends. Inness often invited
Eaton to paint in his studio, subsequently he was the greatest
influence in Eaton's artistic life and formation.
After Inness' death, the bond continued between Eaton and George Inness
Jr., another great painter like his father. Eaton, like the
Inness father and son, belonged to a school of artists who turned to
the lush and diverse landscapes of America for their inspiration.
They were instrumental in shaping a very important facet of America's
identity; one that created a national and international tourist
industry. They assisted in legitimizing Americans as true
artists. They mastered light, texture, composition, and portrayed
a unique subject matter: America's back forests and trails, national
parks, and unseen wonders.
Chas Eaton's most revered works are paintings of pine forests, meadows,
and hillside villages. He was one of a handful of artists
specially commissioned to paint scenes of Glacier National Park in
Montana. His works, as well as those of the other American
landscape artists, were pivotal in raising awareness for the
preservation and conservation of America's treasured National Parks.
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Biography from Spanierman Gallery:
| 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.
Unlike others in the Tonalist school, Eaton was late in traveling abroad and never studied there. Born in Albany, New York, he showed little interest in art until his twenties when he came to New York City and began studying at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. He readily absorbed the Barbizon work shown at the Academy as well as paintings by American landscapists.
His studio mate, Leonard Ochtman, was a native Dutchman who no doubt stirred Eaton's interest in Europe. In 1886, he traveled with Ochtman to Grez (near Barbizon), Paris, London, and Holland. Eaton's first mature themes of the 1890s were those of bridges and the neighboring countryside executed in an atmospheric, mood-evoking style with a palette of greens, browns and grays. He chose the romantic town of Bruges, the haystacks along the low-lying Dutch plains as subject matter but carefully selected the time of day (twilight, dusk) and the season (autumn, winter) to coincide with his unique sensibilities.
An important event occurred in 1889. As the story goes, Inness, who had a studio in the same building as Eaton, walked through his open door one day, admired his paintings then stepped back to read the name on the door-plate. He returned the next day, purchased a painting, and initiated a relationship which would remain a source of pride to Eaton.
Like Elliott Daingerfield, Eaton was one of very few younger artists who could claim Inness as a mentor, and he took obvious pleasure in the opportunity to observe directly Inness's personal and impassioned approach to landscape painting. Eaton, in fact, had settled a year earlier in Bloomfield, New Jersey, a town near Inness's home in Montclair.
Around 1900, Eaton discovered the white pine forests of Connecticut near his summer haunts of Thompson and Colebrook. These were his most popular paintings at the National Academy's annuals and he was dubbed "The Pine Tree Painter." Tall, dark pines silhouetted against sunset and moonlit skies became a specialty and firmly established Eaton as an American Tonalist.
His last mature works, around 1910 and thereafter, were a break from this Tonalist mode. Summer trips to Italy in 1910, 1911 and 1912 found him entranced by the hillside villages around Lake Como. His palette of brilliant whites, rich oranges, greens and blues, brightened considerably, due to a new interest in broad daylight. Heavier impasto and choppy brushwork also characterize this late work.
The artist died in New York City in 1937. |
Biography from AskART:
| The following is submitted by Dr. John J. Siudmak:
Charles
Eaton resided in Bloomfield, New Jersey for fifty years at 63 Monroe
Place and maintained a studio at this residence. His New York studio
was located at 9 West 17th Street. He never married and retired at the
age of 70, and did not paint at all during the last 10 years of his
life. He died in 1937 at Mountainside Hospital, Montclair, New Jersey
(the adjoining town).
His physician, whom I knew personally,
was Dr. Rudy Fager. He told me an interesting story about when he opened his
practice in Montclair in 1933. Soon after Mr. Eaton chose him as his
physician. At his introduction with Dr. Fager he shyly told him that
his waiting room was too bare and had nothing hanging on the four
walls. He said that he is a painter and would like to bring him four of
this paintings to be hung on each wall and in a few months he would
return to find out which one his liked best as a gift. On his return
Dr. Fager told him that he liked all of them. Mr. Eaton graciously
gifted him all four of the paintings.
Mr. Eaton was buried in
Bloomfield Cemetery located on Belleville Avenue. A very simple small
granite monument marks his resting place (which I visited).
I
purchased in 1965 my first Eaton, The Belgian Farm, 1902,
20x30
for $200.00. During my perusal in the Montclair Art Museum
library, I
discovered an interesting letter addressed to the museum dated February
2, 1964 from Priscilla D. Polkinghorn. Her grandfather, Samuel
Foster,
and Mr. Eaton were life-long friends and when Mr. Eaton died, he left
his entire estate to Priscilla, which included the home and
several-hundred of his paintings. She was in the process of
arranging a
memorial exhibition at the museum. She also stated in this letter
that
she had a considerable number of his paintings for sale. Of
course, I
immediately contacted her and purchased two of them still unframed as
Eaton had left them ($ 75.00 --- $ 150.00 respectively !!)
With
the recent increasing rediscovery of Eaton's works, if I had known it at
that time, my purchases would have been much more numerous. |
Biography from AskART:
| 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, both Tonalist painters, and traveled with them to France
and England where each formed their own style in reaction to the
pervasive Barbizon style of rural landscape and genre painting. They
also visited Holland where Eaton painted many canal scenes.
He
continued to travel rather extensively, visiting Glacier National Park
in Montana in 1921 and returned to Italy in 1910 to 1912 and in 1923.
A
reclusive bachelor, Eaton maintained a studio in New York City,
although he lived in Bloomfield, New Jersey. He painted many snow
scenes in white and grey purple tones, but by 1900 was focusing more on
the theme of the Berkshire pine forests of New York State. His
work got less and less attention as modernism became pervasive, and he
became increasingly alone and introspective.
He won many prizes
including ones at the Salmagundi Club, the Philadelphia Art Club and
the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. He was a founding member of the Lotus
and Salmagundi Clubs.
In October 2004, a retrospective of
Eaton's paintings, "Intimate Landscapes: Charles Warren Eaton and the
Tonalist Movement in American art, 1880-1920", was held at the de Menil
Gallery at Groton School.
Source:
Michael Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
http://www.groton.org/home/news_item.asp?id=162
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
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| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Charles Eaton is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exhibition 1915
Tonalism
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