Charles Allen Winter was an innovative student of art and artists. He was born in Cincinnati, OH in 1869 and became a leading painter, illustrator, decorator, drawing specialist, teacher, lecturer and muralist from his studio in Gloucester, MA.

Winter studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy with Noble and Notwottny; at the Académie Julian with Bouguereau and Ferrier (1894-1896) and in Rome, but he was more influenced by the teachings and paintings of American contemporaries Frank Duveneck, Childe Hassam and Edward Henry Potthast than the European masters. He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1896 and 1898 and at the Art Institute of Chicago, but for some reason after 1900 he became somewhat reclusive in his study of art and stopped exhibiting publicly. Although he painted murals for the City Hall in Gloucester and at the University of Wyoming he preferred illustrating for books and magazines.

Winter was an extremely advanced, almost Fauvist landscape painter whom many artists admired. During the 1890s he constructed unique color wheels from which painters could learn how to draw and paint. During the early 1900s he taught John Sloan, Robert Henri, William Glackens and John Marin painting techniques in Gloucester, and on many occasions Edward Henry Potthast, Frank Duveneck and John H. Twachtman lived with Winter in his Gloucester studio and painted alongside him in that seaside township.

Winter did illustration work for Cosmopolitan and Hearst’s magazines, covers for Collier’s and work for American Bank Note Company and he illustrated many books including Elbert Hubbard’s “Little Sermons.”