The Wood Chopper, 1906
Oil on canvas
Gift of Fenton L.B. Brown 1983.30

In 1901 Louis Paul Dessar purchased a 600-acre estate on Becket Hill in the neighboring town of Lyme. The rural region was particularly suited to his interest in painting landscapes in the Barbizon tradition. To provide himself with models, he stocked his farm with sheep and oxen. Dessar found in the character and flintiness of the New England wood chopper a subject rich with possibility. Tonalist painters like Henry Ward Ranger and Dessar were greatly influenced by their admiration of the Old Masters.

They used glazes and varnish to imitate the golden tone of those paintings, which was often caused by old varnish layers that had darkened. Tonalists believed that their works would “ripen” and improve with time—in fact, glazes that were originally slightly brown have often become even darker over time. Paintings like The Wood Chopper led Impressionists to jokingly label Tonalists the “baked apple” or “brown gravy” school.