Tyson studied in Philadelphia at the Forsyth's and Delancy schools. His family had a home in Maine, where he spent most of his summers. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1896-1899) under Anshutz, Chase and Beaux. He then went to Paris where he purchased paintings by the impressionists, starting his life-long habit of art collecting. He then went to Munich where he studied at the Royal Academy with Karl Marr and Walter Thor, and then on to Madrid where he copied in the art galleries.
In 1912, while painting the portrait of Helen Roebling, the granddaughter of the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, the couple fell in love and married. They lived in Philadelphia until 1924 when they moved to Chestnut Hill.
During World War I, Tyson designed government stamps and recruiting posters, and worked on ship camouflage at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Around 1918 he began painting the birds of Mt. Desert Island. A portfolio of them was published in 1934-35. His works were exhibited at Durand-Ruel (1927), Wildenstein Gallery (1936, 1946) and at the Pennsylvania Academy (1947). In 1944, the National Academy of Design awarded him the Carnegie Prize for the most meritorious painting by an American for "Somes Sound", a Maine scene.
Tyson was active in the public sphere, serving as director of the Phoenix Iron Company, the Little Schuylkill Navigation and Coal Company, the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad Company, the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Museum and the Fairmount Park Association.
Tyson was primarily a painter of landscape in an impressionist style. He was later influenced by Cezanne. Most of his work depicts scenes in Maine. Tyson was friends with Mary Cassat, Claude Monet, and in Philadelphia with Adolph Borie and Henry McCarter. He was cousin to John Singer Sargent.
Tyson was nominated to the NAD by Jerry Farnsworth. The portrait of Tyson is by William Yarrow.
