Le Tournesol (The Sunflower) by Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen, Across the Salt Marshes, Huntington, c. 1905, oil on canvas, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, © Toledo Museum of Art

Edward Steichen, Moonrise, Mamaroneck, 1904, platinum and ferroprussiate print, George Eastman House, reproduced with permission of Joanna T. Steichen

The paintings and photographs that Steichen made at the turn of the century were of similar subjects: vaporous,tree-filled landscapes captured at dusk or in moonlight. The paintings, rendered in low-keyed hues of blues and greens or browns and grays and infused with soft-filtered light, were characteristic of a contemporaneous American art movement called tonalism. Steichen was also influenced by European symbolist painters and the "nocturnes and symphonies" of James McNeill Whistler.