Charles Warren Eaton - Mid-career

Mid-career

Eaton reached his maturity as an artist in the 1890s and 1900s with two distinctive landscape subjects. The first subject, tonalist in style, was a landscape typically containing pasture, trees and sometimes a small patch of water or stone fence. The overall mood in these paintings is one of intimacy. The second subject, more stately in manner, was a landscape with a grouping of tall pine trees, often backlit with the glow of a setting sun. He developed this second subject into some of his largest works, and was so successful with them he became known as "the pine tree painter". Eaton almost never included human or animal figures in his landscapes.

Eaton worked primarily in oil and watercolor. He was a founding member of the American Watercolor Society. He exhibited at the well-known Macbeth Gallery in New York for over thirty years, in Paris via the famous dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, and at important international expositions. He also served on numerous exhibition juries. For reasons that are unclear but possibly political in nature, Eaton never gained full membership to the National Academy nor to the Society for American Artists.