Portrait of George Inness

George Inness Painting Reproductions 3 of 8

1825-1894

American Romanticism Painter

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 the 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.

Youth
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 Regis-Francois 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.

Early career
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 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.

Maturity
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.

188 George Inness Paintings

The Elm Tree, c.1880 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

The Elm Tree c.1880

Oil Painting
$416
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: ING-9127
George Inness
Original Size: 30.5 x 25.4 cm
The Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, USA

Afterglow, c.1878 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Afterglow c.1878

Oil Painting
$453
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: ING-9128
George Inness
Original Size: 36.2 x 31.2 cm
Private Collection

Evening, 1865 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Evening 1865

Oil Painting
$522
Canvas Print
$70.14
SKU: ING-9129
George Inness
Original Size: 45.7 x 61 cm
Private Collection

Sundown, 1887 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Sundown 1887

Oil Painting
$505
Canvas Print
$68.42
SKU: ING-9130
George Inness
Original Size: 45.1 x 60.3 cm
Private Collection

After a Summer Shower, 1894 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

After a Summer Shower 1894

Oil Painting
$691
Canvas Print
$57.71
SKU: ING-9131
George Inness
Original Size: 81.9 x 107.6 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Catskill Mountains, 1870 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Catskill Mountains 1870

Oil Painting
$660
Canvas Print
$50.51
SKU: ING-9132
George Inness
Original Size: 123.8 x 184.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Moonrise, 1891 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Moonrise 1891

Oil Painting
$525
Canvas Print
$63.52
SKU: ING-9133
George Inness
Original Size: 76.5 x 64.1 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

The Home of the Heron, 1893 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

The Home of the Heron 1893

Oil Painting
$570
Canvas Print
$85.39
SKU: ING-9134
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 115.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

The Mill Pond, 1889 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

The Mill Pond 1889

Oil Painting
$645
Canvas Print
$58.40
SKU: ING-9135
George Inness
Original Size: 95.9 x 75.6 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

The Lone Farm, Nantucket, 1892 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

The Lone Farm, Nantucket 1892

Oil Painting
$611
Canvas Print
$50.65
SKU: ING-9136
George Inness
Original Size: 78.1 x 116.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Crossing the Ford, 1848 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Crossing the Ford 1848

Oil Painting
$659
Canvas Print
$69.20
SKU: ING-9137
George Inness
Original Size: 57.2 x 62.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Etretat, Normandy, France, c.1874/75 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Etretat, Normandy, France c.1874/75

Oil Painting
$661
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: ING-9138
George Inness
Original Size: 76.8 x 114.9 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Landscape, Sunset, 1889 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Landscape, Sunset 1889

Oil Painting
$621
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: ING-9139
George Inness
Original Size: 56.3 x 91.8 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Moonlight on Passamaquoddy Bay, 1893 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Moonlight on Passamaquoddy Bay 1893

Oil Painting
$601
SKU: ING-9140
George Inness
Original Size: 76.8 x 114.9 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Hudson River Valley, 1867 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Hudson River Valley 1867

Oil Painting
$611
Canvas Print
$65.84
SKU: ING-9141
George Inness
Original Size: 61 x 87.6 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA

The Lonely Pine - Sunset, 1893 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

The Lonely Pine - Sunset 1893

Oil Painting
$594
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: ING-9142
George Inness
Original Size: 77.5 x 114.3 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA

Landscape, 1848 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Landscape 1848

Oil Painting
$835
Canvas Print
$83.42
SKU: ING-9147
George Inness
Original Size: 74.9 x 113 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA

Moonlight, 1893 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Moonlight 1893

Oil Painting
$550
Canvas Print
$94.30
SKU: ING-9148
George Inness
Original Size: 55.2 x 67.9 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA

Niagara, 1893 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Niagara 1893

Oil Painting
$610
SKU: ING-9149
George Inness
Original Size: 115 x 178 cm
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, USA

Evening at Medfield, Massachusetts, 1875 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Evening at Medfield, Massachusetts 1875

Oil Painting
$591
Canvas Print
$76.10
SKU: ING-9150
George Inness
Original Size: 96.5 x 160.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Autumn Oaks, c.1878 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Autumn Oaks c.1878

Oil Painting
$578
Canvas Print
$50.65
SKU: ING-9151
George Inness
Original Size: 54.3 x 76.5 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Peace and Plenty, 1865 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Peace and Plenty 1865

Oil Painting
$752
Canvas Print
$87.53
SKU: ING-9152
George Inness
Original Size: 197.2 x 285.4 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Spring Blossoms, Montclair, New Jersey, c.1891 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Spring Blossoms, Montclair, New Jersey c.1891

Oil Painting
$561
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: ING-9153
George Inness
Original Size: 73.7 x 114.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Pine Grove of the Barberini Villa, 1876 by George Inness | Painting Reproduction

Pine Grove of the Barberini Villa 1876

Oil Painting
$633
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: ING-9154
George Inness
Original Size: 200 x 301 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

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