On View
On viewObject number2006.67
Sunset
Artist
Dwight William Tryon
(American, 1849-1925)
Date1919
Mediumoil on board
Dimensionsimage: 11 in. × 15 1/2 in. (27.9 × 39.4 cm)
frame: 21 1/4 × 26 × 2 1/2 in. (54 × 66 × 6.4 cm)
frame: 21 1/4 × 26 × 2 1/2 in. (54 × 66 × 6.4 cm)
Credit LineElisabeth Claire Lahti Fund in honor of Susan VanArendonk's 24 years of service
Exhibition History"Dwight William Tryon: A Retrospective Exhibition," Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT (Apr. 19 - May 30, 1971) (no. 94).
"Recognizing the Painterly Tradition in American Art: 1850-1920, From a Western New York Collection," Burchfield Center, State University College at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY (Mar. 30 - May 4, 1980) (Cat. No. 67).
"A Legacy for Kalamazoo: Works Acquired through the Elisabeth Claire Lahti Fund, 1998 - 2012," KIA (Sept. 29, 2012 - Jan. 20, 2013).
Double Take: Artists Respond to the Collection, KIA, August 23, 2014 - January 18, 2015.
"Legendary Voices: Art for the Next Century," KIA (September 7 - February 18, 2025)Label TextA Hartford, Connecticut native, Dwight William Tryon left school at fourteen to work in a firearms factory to help support his struggling family. Later, he studied art from the manuals he found while working in a local bookstore, and it was not until he was in his late twenties that he sold all of the work he had yet attempted in order to finally undertake formal art study in Paris. Ironically, despite his late entrance into the art world, after returning from Europe he became an art teacher, first giving lessons in New York City and ultimately spending nearly four decades as an instructor at Smith College.
Eventually, Tryon’s misty paintings led him to be associated with Tonalism, a late nineteenth-century movement in which careful chronicling of light conditions and hazy landscapes were central features. Defined by their persistent horizontality, Tryon’s paintings are pleasant without being saccharine. Sunset scenes were popular subjects among Tonalists given the dramatic light conditions they could offer, and in this scene Tryon depicts a colorful landscape and a sky with a host of shades of blue, yellow, and red. Featuring no evidence of human presence, the haze of the landscape makes it seem as though the trees are almost disappearing. Ultimately, it seems less like a chronicling of a real view than a representation of a sentimental mood and a sign of a desire to picture America as an ethereal, Arcadian landscape.
