One of the finest and most successful landscape painters of his day, Charles H. Davis began his professional career in France during the 1880s, painting evocative views of nature that contributed to his reputation as one of the leading American Tonalists. Upon repatriating to the United States, he turned his attention to the scenery he encountered in the vicinity of his home in Mystic, Connecticut, and went on to change his style: indeed, by the mid-1890s Davis had adopted a luminous brand of Impressionism that brought him critical and popular acclaim. Renowned for his ability to capture the underlying spirit of his subject, one commentator declared: “he was always concerned about fidelity to mood than fidelity to naturalistic detail. All his greatest pictures were in this way imaginative creations.”1
Davis was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, the son of James H. Davis, a teacher, and his wife, Elizabeth. At the age of fifteen he left school to work as an apprentice in a carriage factory, while drawing and painting in his spare time. Feeling unfulfilled in his work, he eventually decided to pursue an artistic career, a decision that was prompted by the excitement he felt upon viewing some drawings by French Barbizon painters, such as Jean-François Millet, at the Boston Athenaeum. Davis went on to study under Otto Grundmann at the Boston Museum School from 1877 to 1880. He did well at his studies—so well, in fact, that an Amesbury businessman took a chance on his future success and advanced him one thousand dollars to further his training in France.
In the autumn of 1880, Davis went to Paris, enrolling in classes in figure painting at the Académie Julian. However, upon discovering the pictorial delights of the countryside around the Fontainebleau Forest, where he painted en plein air, Davis abandoned the figure in favor of landscape painting. After settling in the village of Fleury, near Barbizon, he went on to paint romantic sunset and twilight landscapes influenced by the poetic approach of the Barbizon School. During these years, the artist exhibited his work at the Paris Salon, and at American venues such as the National Academy of Design and the Society of American Artists in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1887 he had his first solo exhibition at Reichard and Company in New York. Davis’s patrons included some of the most important collectors of Tonalist painting, including Thomas B. Clarke and George Seney, who were attracted to the serene and restful qualities of his work.
In the fall of 1891, seeking a quiet place in which to live and paint, Davis established his home and studio in Mystic, a small town in coastal Connecticut where he remained for the rest of his life. He adhered to a Tonalist approach in his early Connecticut landscapes; however, by the mid-1890s—responding to the clear light of New England—he brightened his palette, and by about 1905 he had become fully identified with the Impressionist aesthetic. Davis’s conversion to Impressionism coincided with his interest in exploring the pictorial potential of clouds, which he portrayed in all varieties of weather conditions. To be sure, his depictions of cloud formations brought him critical accolades and contributed to his standing in the art scene. Davis even wrote an article on the subject, which was published in Palette and Bench in September of 1909. The artist continued to pursue this subject until the mid-1910s, when he broadened his repertoire of landscape themes to include views of orchards, meadows and uplands that were lauded for their sparkling lyricism.
Davis’s work appeared regularly at the major national annuals, where he won numerous awards and honors, including the Pennsylvania Academy’s Lippincott Prize (1901), the National Academy of Design’s Altman Prize (1917), and a Gold Medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915. He also had many one-man shows at the prestigious Macbeth Gallery in New York and at Doll and Richards in Boston. As well as being a respected member of the New York art scene—he was elected an academician of the venerable National Academy of Design in 1903—Davis played an important role in the artistic life of Mystic: his presence there attracted other artists to the town, such as John Joseph Ennecking and David Walkey, thus contributing to Mystic’s growth as an art colony. In response to the influx of artists into Mystic, Davis established the Mystic Art Association in 1913.
Davis died in Mystic on August 5th 1933. It was said by one admirer that: “No man was ever more passionately devoted to his art, more assiduous and untiring in the pursuit of it, and the harvest of work he left to succeeding generations is rich and varied.”2 A critically acclaimed memorial exhibition was held at the Macbeth Gallery in March of 1934.
Examples of Davis’s work can be found in major public collections throughout the United States, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut; the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; the St. Louis Art Museum; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
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1. Louis Bliss Gillet, “Charles H. Davis,” American Magazine of Art 27 (March 1934): 108.
