The chart is an interactive lineage map. Tonalism sits at the center, on a timeline that runs from older movements at the top to newer ones at the bottom. The movements that influenced it appear above it, any parallel movements it developed alongside sit on its own row, and the movements it later influenced appear below. Every line is a real, cited connection between two movements: a solid line is an influence historians broadly agree on, and a dashed line is an indirect, parallel, or contested link.

For Tonalism (c. 1880 – 1915), it traces two movements that shaped it, all well-established links: the Barbizon school and the Hudson River School; it runs alongside one parallel movement, a well-established link: the American Barbizon school; it fans out to two movements it went on to influence, all indirect or contested links: Art photography and Australian Tonalism.