Spanierman Gallery, LLC is pleased to announce the opening, on November 12, 2005, of The Poetic Vision: American Tonalism, an exhibition that provides the broadest understanding thus far of a movement that played a major role in American art at the turn of the twentieth century. Although a renewed awareness of Tonalism has been growing since the 1970s, many misconceptions about the movement and the identity of its practitioners have lingered. Drawing on the contributions of leading scholars, this exhibition and its accompanying catalogue seek to clarify many of the questions that have been raised about Tonalism, while contributing to the ongoing discussion as to its nature in general and how it was manifested in painting, as well as in photography, the decorative arts, and poetry. Accompanying the show is a 200-page catalogue, with ten essays by noted art historians and 112 color illustrations, which is available for $85.00 (ppd, please include sales tax).

The exhibition consists of loans from museums and private collections and works for sale by artists who held key roles within the Tonalist movement, including Bruce Crane, Leon Dabo, Charles Harold Davis, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Charles Warren Eaton, Birge Harrison, Arthur Hoeber, George Inness, Hermann Dudley Murphy, Leonard Ochtman, Charles Rollo Peters, Henry Ward Ranger, Dwight William Tryon, James McNeill Whistler, and Alexander H. Wyant.

Tonalism emerged gradually beginning in the years following the Civil War, in response to a general awareness in America and elsewhere that the seen world was not necessarily aligned with an objective reality. It was this understanding that motivated George Inness, whose metaphysical ideology and landscapes were the primary sources from which Tonalism sprang. To Inness, “elaborateness in detail” did not result in meaning, as he “could not sustain it everywhere and produce the sense of spaces and distance and with them that subjective mystery of nature with which wherever I went I was filled.” Deriving influences from the French Barbizon and Dutch Hague Schools as well as from such American artists as Inness, George Fuller, and William Morris Hunt, many American artists had turned in the direction of a more poetic, suggestive mode by the mid-1880s. However, Tonalism did not fully develop as a distinctive American phenomenon until the next decade, when partly in reaction against the contemporaneous spread of the influence of French Impressionism, artists honed their works to create harmonious, reductive images that merged Barbizon influences with the refinement associated with the art of James McNeill Whistler. New York’s Lotos Club was an important promoter of Tonalist art, and sought through its exhibitions and press releases to link the works of American tonal painters with the great art of the past.

Most artists allied with Tonalism were landscape painters, and their works run the gamut from Barbizon influenced works such as Dwight Tryon’s End of Day (1887), in which a countryside reveals itself through a heavy atmosphere illuminated by the afterglow of the sun, to Whistlerian inspired nocturnes, such as Charles Eaton’s Winter Night (1893), Hermann Dudley Murphy’s Nocturne (1895), Leon Dabo’s Hudson River (1918), and Henry Prellwitz’s Moonlight Ring (1910s-20s). While Tonalism’s stronghold was in the northeast, the style also spread to northern California, inspiring evocative works such as the dark blue nocturnes of Charles Rollo Peters, as demonstrated in Sand Dunes, Monterrey (1901) and Manuel Valencia’s exploration of moonlit effects, as seen in Monterrey Customs House (ca. 1910s). A few artists applied the manner of Tonalism to figural work, most notably Thomas Wilmer Dewing, who is represented in the exhibition by Young Girl Seated (1896), in which a hazy figure’s psychological detachment seems at once mysterious, enigmatic, and soulful. Although the characteristics of Tonalism were in many ways antithetical to those of Impressionism, many artists brought together elements of the two styles, especially in images of misty or wintry days. Among those who most consistently united these modes were J. Alden Weir, whose Farm Scene (1888) reflects how artists often simply incorporated Impressionist techniques into earlier established styles to enhance the expressive force of their art, and John Henry Twachtman, whose images draw the viewer from the palpable and specific qualities of a place into a spiritual and meditative zone, as demonstrated in Barn in Winter, Greenwich, Connecticut (ca. 1890s) and November Haze (ca. 1890s). The art of Tonalist precursors, such as William Morris Hunt and George Fuller, are included in the exhibition, as is a work by the influential Tonalist source, James McNeill Whistler.

The catalogue for the exhibition is a significant contribution to American art scholarship. Following an introduction that provides a definition of Tonalism by Ralph Sessions is an essay by William H. Gerdts, entitled “American Tonalism: An Artistic Overview,” which was first published in 1982 and has been out of print for many years. This defining text is a foundation for current scholarship. The other essays include a discussion of the role of the Lotos Club in championing tonal painting by Jack Becker; a survey of the Society of Landscape Painters by Dr. Gerdts, which stands as the first examination of this group of Tonalist artists who showed together between 1899 and 1903; an analysis by Nicholai Cikovsky, Jr. of Inness’s art and ideas; a consideration by Linda Merrill of Whistler, whose masterful work was highly influential; a study by Lisa N. Peters of how the art of Weir and Twachtman exemplified a middleground style often referred to as Tonal-Impressionism; an exploration of the relationship between Tonalism and photography by Diane P. Fischer, which demonstrates how during his early career, the modernist advocate and photographer Alfred Stieglitz adopted Tonalist strategies in an effort to create a distinctly American form of photography and to promote it as a fine art; an analysis of how Tonalism was applied to art pottery by Ellen Paul Denker; and an exploration by Dr. Gerdts of the relationship between the poems of Adelaide Crapsey and Tonalist painting. Entries on the artists and their works by Carol Lowrey follow the essays. Finally, an index of artists complied by Dr. Peters supplies an important reference, augmenting the essays and entries by further highlighting the diversity of artists who contributed to the poetic vision in American landscape painting.