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About Dwight Tryon
A major representative of American tonalism, Dwight Tryon adapted impressionist innovations, lightening his palette and painting on a white ground with broken brushwork, in the later part of his career. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut on 13 August 1849 the son of Anson Tryon, a mason, and Delia O. Roberts Tryon. Best described as self-educated, Tryon worked in a Hartford bookstore, where he was able to read whenever business was at a lull. From the early 1870s there are sketches of boats, which reportedly cluttered his desk, and in 1872, Tryon became secretary of the Hartford Art Association. Samuel P. Avery, the New York art dealer, purchased Gunning Rock — Narragansett, a watercolor, and in 1873, Tryon made his debut at the National Academy of Design. That year, he married Alice Hapzibah Belden. When Tryon left his job at the bookstore, his friend Samuel Clemens told him he was making a mistake. Tryon’s other literary friends included Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Dudley Warner. His earliest painted landscapes were executed in a luminist manner, which he relinquished in 1876, when he began to show Alexander Wyant’s influence. Wyant, thirteen years Tryon’s senior, had been trained in Düsseldorf and was influenced by George Inness. Tryon would have seen Wyant’s works beginning in 1873 when both were exhibiting at the National Academy. In Clay Cliffs at Sunset, Block Island (Private collection), exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the Cole-inspired cliffs and the mirror-like wet beach contrast with the atmospheric sunset and clouds rendered with a thicker impasto.
Sensing a need for basic and methodical art instruction, Tryon sailed for Paris in late 1876, where he enrolled in the private atelier of Louis-Marie-François Jacquesson de la Chevreuse (1839-1903), who was taught by both Ingres and Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The disciplined Tryon worked three years until his teacher retired in 1880. Soon, Tryon sought out Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878) who was working at Auvers. Also influential were Henri-Joseph Harpignies (1819-1916), and Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Guillemet (1843-1918), whom Tryon credits with encouraging him to take an independent path. Tryon’s Twilight at Auvers (Montclair Art Museum) dated 1878, might be seen as a kind of memorial to Daubigny. For Linda Merrill (1990, p. 35), it recalls Corot, one of Guillemet’s teachers.
Back in New York that fall, Tryon set up a studio on 57th Street, in the Rembrandt Building and accepted private students. Other artists working there were Will Low, R. Swain Gifford, and Maria Oakey Dewing. In 1882, he became a member of the Society of American Artists. Between 1885 and 1923, Tryon taught at Smith College. Daybreak (Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design), a relatively early work (1885) brings to mind Whistler’s Crepuscule of Flesh Color and Green: Valparaiso (Tate Gallery, London), painted in 1866. Tryon could have seen Whistler’s works in London on his way home to America. Tryon’s Daybreak, however, reveals heavy impasto, while Whistler applied a thinner pigment, almost an “oil wash” to suggest a thin mist. Tryon’s “moonlights,” which Merrill (1990, p. 48) considers a synonym for “nocturne,” fall into the 1880s chronologically. The National Academy’s Third Hallgarten Prize was awarded to Tryon in 1887. Then The First Leaves (Smith College Museum of Art) announces Tryon’s quintessential style. An empty foreground leads to a row of birches in the middleground. The trees, of uniform height, extend above the hill stretching across the canvas. This painting, which was awarded the Webb Prize in 1889, presents the formula for many of Tryon’s works to come.
Also in 1889, Tryon sold The Rising Moon: Autumn to Charles Lang Freer, who would become his most important patron. Eventually, he would own seventy-two of Tryon’s works. The artist established a routine, living off of Central Park in the winter months and leaving for Dartmouth in April. Spring and autumn landscapes were Tryon’s favorite to paint: he simply disliked winter and would have nothing to do with plein air painting while standing in the snow. In March 1891, Tryon, now a full National Academician, offered to contribute to the decoration of Freer’s shingle-style house, including paintings, wall coverings, woodwork, and other details. Tryon produced a cycle of seasons with an additional work, Dawn (1892-93). Later in 1897, yet another painting was added: Early Spring in New England, an impressive 71 inches high, and in 1900, Tryon’s first one-man show was mounted at Montross Gallery. The artist continued to exhibit in group shows and ten of his works appeared in the World’s Columbian Exposition.
The late years (1900-25) include another solo show at Montross in 1913, then Tryon seems to have dropped out of the New York art scene, lamenting the “careless workmanship” of contemporary artists and he soon questioned the taste of Montross who featured works by Joseph Stella and Walt Kuhn (Merrill, 1990, p. 84). Tryon was resigned to let posterity decide the value of his work (Tryon to George Alfred Williams, 27 June 1915, Nelson White Papers, AAA). He died in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts on the first of July, 1925.
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Paintings by Dwight Tryon
| Night |
| oil on canvas: 7x 11 inches |
| signed: lower left |
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 Click Picture to Enlarge
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