The founder of the New Hope Pennsylvania Impressionist Colony, he was known as one of America's premier landscape painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His style was Tonalist, which coincided with Impressionism but was not plein air nor focused on light, sunny colors. He was not innovative in style, but much admired for the strength and skillfully conveyed mood of his canvases. He avoided formula painting because he wanted to keep his work alive and spontaneous.

He was born in Warren, Illinois, and raised on a farm in Painesville, Ohio near Cleveland His father was a doctor and his mother was Irish and a lover of the arts. As a boy, he did much carving from the local clay and bought his first...