Early Winter, by Paul King, is arguably the artist's finest work. Painted sometime around 1919, the exhibition sized canvas measures 50 x 60 inches. The painting is oil on canvas mounted on board and has been recently cleaned and varnished. Edward Hale Brush described this particular painting in 1924 as "characteristically American, a river, a bridge, a village blanketed under snow and a sort of feeling everywhere that more snow is coming". The original frame bears exhibition labels from a selection of the exhibitions in which the painting was featured. The labels on the reverse are from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (where the painting was exhibited in the annual exhibition in 1919 and illustrated in the accompanying catalogue), the City Art Museum of St. Louis, Art Association of Newport, and the National Academy of Design, where the painting won the first Altman Prize for Landscape in 1923 ($1,000 prize). The front of the frame bears of a plate listing the artist and title of the painting, as well as the fact that the painting was awarded the distinguished Altman Prize. Paul King was born in Buffalo, New York in 1867. From 1901-1904 he studied at the Art Students League where he developed a fairly conservative painting style. In 1905, he traveled abroad and studied painting in France, Italy and Holland. While in Europe he was exposed to the Fauves, which allowed him to pull away slightly from his conservative painting style and begin to experiment with and adopt new techniques. In 1933, King was named a full academician at the National Academy of Design.