Award winning Canadian landscape painter living in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, Canada, painting in the moody tonalist style.
You are welcome to follow along with me on my artistic journey on Instagram @virginiabergmannart

 

What is tonalism?

Spanning the late 1880s to the 1920s, tonalism incorporated the use of subtle colour tones, and to quote the man who ‘wrote the book’ on tonalism, David Adams Cleveland, it is “an art about the feeling or mood evoked by the arrangement of landscape elements to project an emotion, rather than a realistic or representational depiction of a certain place.“

 

In my own application of tonalism I try to stir the feeling of timelessness of a landscape. I have felt it when I gazed pensively over a meadow and felt as if I could be anyone standing there at any time period… an ancestor from a bygone era.

 

Tonalism really evolved from the French Barbizon movement which placed the emphasis on atmosphere and shadow and harmonized nature with man.

 

The Glossary of Canadian Art History on the Art Canada Institute webpage says this:

• “Tonalism
  Emerging in the work of American landscape painters in the 1880s and following the influence of the French Barbizon school, Tonalism favoured an expression of a spiritual relationship to the landscape through dark, muted tones and hues. Associated with the work of artists including George Inness and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Tonalism emphasized the mood and atmosphere of a scene.”