![Theodore Earl Butler - Un Jardin, Maison Baptiste [1895]](http://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7062/27319050971_f8dee7a82d_b.jpg)
Theodore Earl Butler (Columbus, Ohio, 1861 - Giverny, May 2, 1936) was an American impressionist painter. He did not receive the recognition he deserved in his lifetime, since he was all but eclipsed by his famous father-in-law, Claude Monet. Butler enrolled in the Art Students League in New York, then continued his studies at various art academies in Paris. He first travelled to Giverny in the summer of 1888, the village that was to become the Impressionist artists’ colony. Initially inspired by Monet, who settled there in 1883, Butler sprung from the French painter’s high-keyed palette, developing his own technique and a style that forecasts elements of the Nabi movement: simple forms, pronounced contours, and flattened spatial effects.
[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 53.7 x 65.4 cm]