Charles W. Eaton

(Albany, New York, 1857 - 1937, Glen Ridge, New Jersey)

American

Eaton was internationally known as the painter of the White Pines of New England. Born in Albany, New York, he worked as a store clerk before developing an interest in art at age twenty-five. In 1878, he moved to New York and attended classes at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design.

During the 1880s, Eaton made frequent trips to New England, painting lonely winter scenes, quiet moonlights and pine forests in the Berkshire Mountains of Connecticut. At the end of the decade, he established a country home in Bloomfield, New Jersey, which became his favorite retreat for painting landscapes directly from nature. He also rented a studio in New York adjoining the studio of George Inness. While Eaton has been described as a pupil of Inness, he had begun his romantic, Tonal landscapes nearly a decade before they met. Besides his oil paintings, Eaton was also known for experimental watercolors, pastels, monotypes and soft-focus photography.

Several dramatic shifts occurred in Eaton’s art after 1900, including a period of Symbolist influence and one of Italianate landscapes. The artist ceased painting entirely ten years before his death in 1937.

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