George Inness

The work of George Inness is remarkable for the extraordinary transformation of the artist’s style over the course of his fifty-year career. The panoramic perspective and extraordinary detail of his early landscapes demonstrates the influence of the Hudson River School, particularly the work of Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole. By the end of his career in the 1890s, Inness’s brushy, almost abstract compositions marked him as an artist of singular vision and as one of the more progressive American painters of the late nineteenth century.

The son of a grocer, Inness was born near Newburgh, New York in 1825 (Cikovsky, Nicolai, Jr. “The Life and Work of George Inness.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1965). He suffered acutely from epilepsy in his youth, and as a result his early artistic training was limited. As a teenager, Inness trained privately with a drawing instructor in New Jersey before taking a position for two years in an engraver’s shop in New York. During this period, he also took classes at the National Academy of Design and studied briefly with the French landscape painter Régis François Gignoux. In 1844, Inness exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design. The sale of several pieces to the American Art-Union in 1845 enabled him to open his own studio, where he attracted the attention of critics and patrons. The financial support of the wealthy auctioneer Ogden Haggerty in 1851 made possible the first of several extended trips to Europe, where he painted the countryside in Italy and France. His work at the time shared much in common with the Hudson River School painters, with a panoramic viewpoint, high horizon line, and emphasis on detail.

In 1853, Inness was elected as an associate member of the National Academy of Design. That same year, he embarked on a trip to France, where he came to know and admire the work of the French Barbizon painters, which emphasized rural subjects, a brushy painting style, and high contrasts of lights and darks. The period that followed his return to the United States was marked by instability, with significant artistic triumphs (completion of The Lackawanna Valley in 1855, a major commission from a railroad company), several moves (from New York to Massachusetts to New Jersey and back to New York), and financial troubles, resulting in a depression that led to a suicide attempt in 1856. Subsequently, his supporters rallied to his defense with commissions for paintings, and Inness recovered. Personal redemption, however, came through his conversion to the Swedenborgian faith in the 1860s, a faith that emphasized the presence of the divine in nature. Gradually, Inness’s landscapes came to reflect this belief, taking on a hazy, indistinct quality that seems to emphasize spirituality and emotion rather than detail. The influence of the French Barbizon painters Inness encountered on his trips to France also contributed to this stylistic change.

During the 1870s, Inness spent long periods of time in Europe, painting and traveling. When he returned to the United States in 1875, his Barbizon-influenced style marked him as one of the more progressive American painters. In 1878, Inness joined the Society of American Artists, a group that broke off from the National Academy of Design in protest of that institution’s rigorous adherence to traditional academic practices.

Inness settled permanently in Montclair, New Jersey, in early 1885, although his restless nature continued to manifest itself in frequent travel, often in search of rest cures. His work at the time was increasingly abstract, marked often by brilliant color, an emphasis on form over subject matter, and extraordinarily loose handling of paint (see The Home of the Heron from 1893), but also notably successful, with major exhibitions and awards from artistic societies both in America and in Europe. In 1893, fifteen of his paintings were included in the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He died the following year, while on a trip to Scotland, at the age of sixty-nine. When his body was returned to New York, it was laid in state at the National Academy of Design (Cikovsky 1965, p. 104). He was survived by his wife and five children. (Unless otherwise noted, dates and biographical data were adapted from Michael Quick’s chronology in: Quick, Michael. George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007, Vol. 2, pp. 447-450.)