George Inness
George Inness(May 1, 1825 - August 3, 1894), was an American
landscape painter; born in Newburgh, New York; died at Bridge of
Allan in Scotland. His work was influenced, in turn, by that of the
old masters, the Hudson River school, the Barbizon school, and,
finally, by the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose spiritualism
found vivid expression in the work of Inness' maturity. He is best
known for these mature works that helped define the Tonalist
movement.
Inness was the fifth of thirteen children born to John Williams
Inness, a farmer, and his wife, Clarissa Baldwin. His family moved
to Newark, New Jersey when he was about five years of age. In 1839
he studied for several months with an itinerant painter, John Jesse
Barker. In his teens, Inness worked as a map engraver in New York
City. During this time he attracted the attention of French
landscape painter Régis François Gignoux, with whom he subsequently
studied. Throughout the mid-1840s he also attended classes at the
National Academy of Design, and studied the work of Hudson River
School artists Thomas Cole and Asher Durand; "If", Inness later
recalled thinking, "these two can be combined, I will try."
Concurrent with these studies Inness opened his first studio in New
York. In 1849 Inness married Delia Miller, who died a few months
later. The next year he married Elizabeth Abigail Hart, with whom
he would have six children.
In 1851 a patron named Ogden Haggerty sponsored Inness' first trip
to Europe to paint and study. Inness spent more than a year in
Rome, during which time he rented a studio above that of painter
William Page, who likely introduced the artist to Swedenborgianism.
During trips to Paris in the early 1850s, Inness came under the
influence of artists working in the Barbizon school of France.
Barbizon landscapes were noted for their looser brushwork, darker
palette, and emphasis on mood. Inness quickly became the leading
American exponent of Barbizon-style painting, which he developed
into a highly personal style. In 1854 his son George Inness, Jr.,
who also became a landscape painter of note, was born in Paris. In
the mid-1850s, Inness was commissioned by the Delaware, Lackawanna
and Western Railroad to create paintings which documented the
progress of DLWRR's growth in early Industrial America. The
Lackawanna Valley, painted ca. 1855, represents the railroad's
first roundhouse at Scranton, Pennsylvania, and integrates
technology and wilderness within an observed landscape; in time,
not only would Inness shun the industrial presence in favor of
bucolic or agrarian subjects, but he would produce much of his
mature work in the studio, drawing on his visual memory to produce
scenes that were often inspired by specific places, yet
increasingly concerned with formal considerations.
The work of the 1860s and 1870s often tended toward the panoramic
and picturesque, topped by cloud-laden and threatening skies, and
included views of his native country (Autumn Oaks, 1878,
Metropolitan Museum of Art ; Catskill Mountains, 1870, Art
Institute of Chicago), as well as scenes inspired by numerous
travels overseas, especially to Italy and France (The Monk, 1873,
Addison Gallery of American Art; Etretat, 1875, Wadsworth
Atheneum). In terms of composition, precision of drawing, and the
emotive use of color, these paintings placed Inness among the best
and most successful landscape painters in America. Eventually
Inness' art evidenced the influence of the theology of Emanuel
Swedenborg. Of particular interest to Inness was the notion that
everything in nature had a correspondential relationship with
something spiritual and so received an "influx" from God in order
to continually exist.
Another influence upon Inness' thinking was William James, also an
adherent to Swedenborgianism. In particular, Inness was inspired by
James' idea of consciousness as a "stream of thought", as well as
his ideas concerning how mystical experience shapes one's
perspective toward nature.
After Inness settled in Montclair, New Jersey in 1878, and
particularly in the last decade of his life, this mystical
component manifested in his art through a more abstracted handling
of shapes, softened edges, and saturated color (October, 1886, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art), a profound and dramatic
juxtaposition of sky and earth (Early Autumn, Montclair, 1888,
Montclair Art Museum ), an emphasis on the intimate landscape view
(Sunset in the Woods, 1891, Corcoran Gallery of Art), and an
increasingly personal, spontaneous, and often violent handling of
paint
It is this last quality in particular which distinguishes Inness
from those painters of like sympathies who are characterized as
Luminists. In a published interview, Inness maintained that "The
true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual
nature." His abiding interest in spiritual and emotional
considerations did not preclude Inness from undertaking a
scientific study of color,nor a mathematical, structural approach
to composition: "The poetic quality is not obtained by eschewing
any truths of fact or of Nature...Poetry is the vision of reality."
Inness died while in Scotland in 1894. According to his son, he was
viewing the sunset, when he threw up his hands into the air and
exclaimed, "My God! oh, how beautiful!", fell to the ground, and
died minutes later.
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