Charles Walter Stetson

The Rhode Island painter Charles Stetson spent his early career in Providence, exhibiting at the Providence Art Club alongside other artists exploring watercolor painting with new emphasis. With Sydney Richmond Burleigh, Stetson designed the famed Fleur de Lys Studio at 7 Thomas Street. Stetson was admired by his contemporaries for his color sense, and artist George Whitaker described him as having a “quick . . . observation of things, especially fugitive effects like cloud shadows falling upon the landscape.” In this expansive work, he used translucent washes and layered emerald green and heavy blue washes into color masses to create a moody landscape in advance of a rainstorm.