Like so many of the Bronxville artists, Walter Clark was well established in his field before moving to the village in 1910. After earning a degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1869, he toured Europe to study art and ar- chitecture. Clark exhibited at the National Academy of Design for almost forty years and won numerous awards for his works. Walter’s son, Eliot, became an important artist in his own right. Father and son shared a studio in Manhattan where the elder artist knew Bruce Crane before moving to Bronxville. Early Spring was no doubt painted in Bronxville and perhaps in the wooded areas along the Bronx River, where Clark would often be seen with his paints and palette completely absorbed in his sketching. He was greatly influenced by the well-known landscape painter George Inness and his style, until the 1890s, was clearly tonalist. As he came to know and to work with the American Impressionists, his palette brightened and his impasto became more pronounced, as in this canvas.
