His mature work owes something to the sophisticated use of colour in the manner of Matisse (1869 - 1954) and the Fauvist painters, as well as to primitivism and the work of American tonalist painter Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847 - 1917). (visual-arts-cork.com)
After studying art in Venice, Afro quickly emerged — in the 1930s — as a signi cant member of the School of Rome, a group of tonalist painters whose expressionist style contrasted with the prevalent neoclassical «return to order» of the day. (galleriesnow.net)
In comparison see the exquisite Tonalist landscape painting of George Inness (visual-arts-cork.com)