Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s.
The French Barbizon school artists emphasized mood and shadow. The movement was eventually eclipsed by Impressionism and European modernism.
American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often dominated compositions by artists associated with the style.
During the late 1890s, American art critics began to use the term "tonal" to describe these works, as well as the lesser-known synonyms Quietism and Intimism. Two of the leading associated painters were George Inness and James McNeill Whistler.
Australian Tonalism emerged as an art movement in Melbourne during the 1910s when it was promoted as a method of 'scientific' realist painting by Max Meldrum through his art school.
St Ives artists were the leading exponents of this style in British landscape painting.
In Canada the movement emerged in the 1890s through the influence of the American, Whistler.