Sawyer, Charles

Charles H. Sawyer (1868-1954, age 86). An American portrait artist, painter, and photographer in Providence, Rhode Island.

Sawyer studied art and painting at the Eaton School. In the 1890’s Sawyer began his career. He also worked as pencil artist for the New York Tribune. There, Sawyer learned the painting and coloring techniques that would move his black and white photographic art to another level.

His reputation was built on his dramatic American and Canadian landscapes. Using watercolor, gouache and oil paints, Sawyer began transforming his black and white photographs into images of glowing landscapes, in many ways reminiscent of the Hudson River School of oil painters.

Commercial color film was still three decades years away, and thirty years of the golden age of hand-painted photography lay ahead. Sawyer added color to his black and white photographs by hand painting and hand-coloring each photograph, one at a time.