A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Tonalism – Easel Talk #39
Tonalism, art history’s forgotten movement (Part 1)
This is going to be a two-part talk about Tonalism. This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I’m not an art historian, and I’m not much of a writer either, but we make our efforts and we feel it. That’s the whole thing with painting. If you’ve caught any themes lately on the channel, that’s one I keep returning to.
In the Vast Tapestry of Art History
In the vast tapestry of art history, Tonalism represents a uniquely evocative tradition. Yet it’s often overlooked in conventional art historical narratives. They like to jump from impressionism to the Ashcan school, or from Cézanne to Picasso to abstract expressionism. They leave Tonalism out. That’s one reason I didn’t have great awareness of it until I started painting. I’m very thankful I found it because it resonates with me at a deep level.
This movement offers profound insights into the relationship between the painter, the landscape, and the viewer. The aesthetic emerged not just as a style, but as a philosophical stance towards nature and our experience of it. It was an extension of the Hudson River School’s spiritual appreciation for nature, nature as a representation of the divine. You can’t have Tonalism without the Hudson River School and you can’t have Tonalism without the Barbizon School. Impressionism was running alongside Tonalism, and impressionism carried the day as we moved into the twentieth century. Tonalism was a bit forgotten, but it made a big resurgence in the 1980s.
The Essence of Tonalism
The visionary landscape. The idea of the unseen world just beneath the surface of opaque reality. This idea is based on the philosopher Swedenborg, who posited that there was a reality just behind surface reality that was far more magical and poetic. That’s what attracts me to Tonalism because I feel that’s what it encapsulates.
This is a space of transcendent luminosity where form is interpenetrated by light and air. This approach is characterized by a distinctive technique resulting in an understated and compelling overall effect. When I came to it, I started trying to achieve these effects. It wasn’t easy. You could just put a glaze over something and it looks tonal, but there’s a lot more to it. The more tonal the painting, generally the more popular it is.
The subject matter is never entirely apparent, and I think that’s really crucial. If you’re looking at something in a reference that isn’t defined, don’t define it in your painting. Keep it undefined. That lack of definition is one of the hallmarks of Tonalism. It distinguishes it quite a bit from the Hudson River School, where everything was delineated as clearly as possible.
Instead, each carefully chosen color, composition, and line is arranged to create an intriguing visual poem. You’ll hear poetry and Tonalism go hand in hand. It is visual poetry. The practitioners of this tradition sought to awaken the viewer’s consciousness by portraying the subject in an indistinct yet emotionally resonant veil. This is very much like what the Hudson River guys were trying to do, only they didn’t have a veil. They tried to make everything crystal clear and sharp. Their intention was to awaken a spiritual feeling in the viewer, and there was always this luminescent light and spiritual quality in their work.
Defining Characteristics
The primary aspects of a painting that would define it as being tonal in nature are these:
Intimate views, not broad panoramas. You can pull off a tonalist panorama if you want, but you have to be in that in-between space. You certainly wouldn’t want to over-delineate it.
Tonal unification. Colors that are tonally unified by means of a ground color, surface, or application of oil paint glazes. Someone like John Francis Murphy would do all three: a textured preparation on the canvas, unified tonal harmony in color choices, and then polish it off with a glaze. It’s not just color. It’s actually value. Value is the real secret behind Tonalism.
Studio work. Tonalism is generally done in the studio, not outdoors in plein air. The tonal thing is a reflection of an interior state, and that’s best accomplished in the studio. The Hudson River painters worked from sketches and drawings they made outdoors, then pulled everything together in the studio.
Diffused forms. Only certain parts of your painting should be very sharp in focus. The rest should be somewhat diffused and indicated, not by blurry, smeary marks, but because you’re not over-rendering. You’re not making things overly clear.
Time of day. Usually early morning, but more often end of day. Late afternoon into twilight. That’s your tonalist buzz.
Emotional resonance. How you feel, how the scene makes you feel, is what you’re using to paint. Not in any overt way, but you let it move through you onto the surface of the painting. It takes practice, but it’s all about intention. If that’s your intention, that’s what you will get.
Minor key. The aesthetic leans more towards a minor key than a major one. If you know music, it’s a sad song, not a happy song.
Restrained color. At any point in time you can choose to work with just a segment of the color wheel. One painting might be all oranges, reds, and greens. Another might be all blues, grays, and lavenders. This is definitely a hallmark of tonalist work.
Less detail, larger masses. These paintings are far less detailed than the work of artists that preceded this movement. Luminous detail is subsumed by greater attention to larger masses. By removing the majority of detail, the viewer is free to use their own imagination. This results in a more relaxed and contemplative effect.
I have people tell me I’m a detailed painter, and I say thank you for the compliment. But what they’re reacting to is the fracture of the brushwork. I don’t paint details. When I’m succeeding, it’s not because I’m painting details. It’s because I’m getting the impression of the details across.
The Role of Figures
I was resistant to painting figures for a long time, but I’ve done a few now. In the Hudson River School, you’d have a giant vista and then over in the corner would be some people by a little campfire or a wagon coming over the ridge. George Inness pulled off figures brilliantly. But for me, figures become a locus of attention, and it takes me out of the painting. A lot of it is a function of scale too. I work quite small, so if I want to put a figure in, it’s going to be a couple of little dots unless it’s more prominent. If you do paint figures, make sure they’re integrated and harmonious with the landscape because a cow in a field or a human walking down the lane becomes the subject.
Corot is considered a Barbizon guy, but that is Tonalism. His atmospheric effects and tonal harmony are unequaled. He had tons of figures in his stuff. So for me, that’s just one of my things. I don’t think it should have figures, but if you do, make sure they’re harmonious with the landscape.
Time of Day and Tonal Work
The time of day portrayed in landscape painting significantly influences its character. Twilight, overcast, or early morning scenes dominate the tonalist aesthetic. Nocturnes definitely can be tonal. The old masters moving into the Dutch guys, a lot of that work is very tonalist. Of all the hallmarks of Tonalism, the number one is tonal harmony. A harmonious tone running through the painting. Nothing especially jarring. Everything complementary.
The golden hour is by nature a more emotional, evocative time. A magical time that creates a poetic atmosphere. The light is diffused, especially right after the sun’s gone down the ridge. There’s still lots of light around but none of it’s direct light, and these little photons are just kind of lazily bouncing off of everything. It’s wonderful, and I love to paint that.
The golden hour is definitely one of the things that distinguishes Tonalism from impressionism, which loves to depict those sort of scenes because they’re into the more contrasty and the primary colors. Tonalism is generally going to do a lot more mixing of colors on the palette. Whereas impressionism a lot of times will offset colors together to create an effect. I really enjoy and love impressionism. I just don’t paint that way.
Subject Selection
You don’t need an inspiring vista. It could just be a tree and a field, and the subject can almost be just the overall light and harmony in the scene. When I first started painting, I was just painting ponds close to my work. I did tons of paintings. I was still learning my tonalist chops at that point. But the point is you don’t need something grand.
The accessibility factor is one of the things that attracts me to this aesthetic. Anything can be your subject. Any scene anywhere. I don’t think dramatic vistas of monuments lend themselves that well to the tonalist aesthetic. But that vacant lot in your neighborhood could be the perfect subject of a painting.
Historical Context
American Tonalism is rooted in the French Barbizon movement, which emphasized atmosphere and shadow. However, this period in art history from 1880 to 1920 is often disregarded by art historians or lumped in with the Barbizon school. In actuality, this tradition is very American. It’s quite different from the Barbizon in many ways, though many of its greatest proponents were trained in the Barbizon school. George Inness made several trips to Europe, and it wasn’t until his second trip or so that he picked up on the Barbizon influence. It changed his work. He came back to America with this new influence, and they didn’t like it. People were saying American art for Americans. They had pride in the Hudson River School because it was uniquely American. Whereas American Tonalism has the influence of the European school, but it ain’t European.
Art history often likes to skip from impressionism to surrealism, which is about a thirty-year jump in time. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that Tonalism occupies this supposedly uninteresting time in art history from the Civil War until just after World War One. Yet this was a time of incredible changes in people’s lives. The rise of the industrial world, people moving into cities, leaving rural environments. In many ways, Tonalism was popular because it harks back to a quiet, more rural approach.
The Hudson River School went from being the popular mode to being far less popular where Tonalism came up. Art historians generally take the Tonalism, cut it in half, put half of it into the Hudson River School and call them luminous, and the other half they call impressionists. There were American tonalist painters that would play with both impressionism and Tonalism. When you try to start using words to define art, you’re kind of in some real deep water. Art historians love to put things in a box, and the fact is that to these painters working in both modes, they didn’t care. They were doing their thing.
So much of what constitutes Tonalism gets on with impressionism. The loose brushwork. The less fussy approach in general to creating a picture. For centuries, the masters have been making little sketches of their paintings prior to making them. Constable’s sketches are amazing. When you see his loose, fractured brushwork, you go whoa dude. Why didn’t you paint like that?
The Subjective Quality of Tonalism
The subjective quality of tonalist painting is poetical, not scientific. Impressionism is definitely more scientific. Light does this, light does that, and the refraction of this and that. Though considered to be representational art, Tonalism is more poetic than scientific, and for that reason more timeless.
When I first came upon this type of work, I could not believe that it wasn’t more widely known because it resonated with me. While I admire many paintings from the Hudson River School, their work falls short in comparison to the tonal school to me because it’s less evocative. Tonalism embraces subjectivity more. It’s not trying to be as rational. It’s not trying to be as delineated. It’s trying to feature more of what captures our heart, what makes us feel in response to nature.
Tonalist paintings are brimming with emotion and a sense of being, a sense of consciousness, a sense that there’s a poetic reality beneath the surface. It’s so easy to connect with these paintings. It almost seems like a conspiracy the way these artists have been disregarded by art history.
The Consciousness Required
That which is moving, subtle, and beautiful requires a similar state in the consciousness of the viewer to be appreciated. I’ve certainly noticed that here in the studio where I’ve had people come in, and then I just keep talking with them about whatever, the weather, where they came from, it doesn’t matter. Then after a while they start going, oh hey wow, your stuff’s really cool. Wow I like that one. It does require a bit of tempering to appreciate Tonalism.
A Response to History
The Civil War and the Industrial Revolution was a massive change, a massive discordant note in the American mentality. In so many ways, Tonalism is a response to that. But it’s much more. It’s a way of looking at reality. It’s a way of looking at painting. It’s a way of expressing yourself.
It represents a yin and a yang. On one side, you get the culmination of landscape painting in the form of impressionism, which is wonderful and carried forward. I have a theory about that. I think impressionism does better on white walls. Tonalism looks better on more subdued surfaces. You can hang Tonalism on a white wall, but everyone’s love of white walls and light colors and big windows means impressionism harmonizes more with that. But that is the yin and the yang. We went from one mode of painting to a bifurcation, Tonalism on one side, impressionism on the other. The light and the dark. With Tonalism, we’re a bit more on the dark side.
Check out the book, 13 Years of Accumulated Painting Knowledge: How to Work in a Tonalist Way. All in one book. I’ll send it to you anywhere on the planet for $65 US. International shipping is included.
Also check out my new channel, Michael Francis McCarthy on YouTube (@mfrancismcarthy), and the new website at mfrancismccarthy.art. Everything I do is on that site.
This is part one of a two-part talk. Part two will cover the contemporary relevance of Tonalism, the emotional power of Tonalism, encountering the unfamiliar, my personal journey, the evolution of technique, the niche appeal of Tonalism, and going beyond imitation.
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