Rensselaer Dearth. Careers Dearth's career can be divided into two periods. Before 1912, he was a tonalism painter and is considered part of the American Barbizon school. Spending most of his time in France, he was naturally fond of the picturesque country, and many of his subjects were found near Boulogne and Montreuil-sur-Mer. These early works show a marked indifference to detail, a somewhat limited palette and a preference for a low key. In art critic Charles Buchanan's words, Dearth was more or less repainting Barbizon, but was "inexpressively exquisite" and "a supreme gentleman of aethetics". After 1912, he altered his technique and painted with broken colors, changing his subjects from the moody landscapes of Long Island and Montreuil to still life and figurative subjects in a style reminiscent of Adolphe Monticelli. Such a style change was marked by his request to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1915 to replace his earlier work with his recent figure painting. Although his late works include portraits and genre subject, his most numerous works of this period were paintings of rock pools in Brittany. The canvases were highly colored; the pigment thickly applied with impressive decorative effect of the compositions. In his final days, Dearth frequently used objects from his substantial collection of Gothic, Renaissance, and Eastern artifacts as his subjects or as backgrounds. His final pictures incorporated important Japanese screens, early Chinese paintings, and stone carvings of the Wei period in still life arrangements or as backgrounds for some finely modeled figures. Death, reception and posthumous fame Henry Golden Dearth died of a heart attack on March 27, 1918 at his home at 116 E. 63 Street, New York City. Dearth's works from the 1890s to the early 1900s show him to be the landscape painter of considerable delicacy, refinement, and imaginative feeling. Paintings such as Springtme Montigny (1899) and Montigny (1898) exemplify his conscientious regard for the facts of nature, combined with a notable faculty for their poetic interpretation in artistic terms. His pictures are full of light and atmosphere, and no matter how brilliant his color schemes, the result is a subtle depth of tone instead of hardness. When Boulogne Harbor was exchanged for Cornelia in Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Times critic commented that "the two pictures seen together would have formed an extraordinary commentary on the completeness and rapidity of a style change possible to