George Inness Painting Reproductions 2 of 9
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.
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.
193 George Inness Paintings
The Storm 1876
Oil Painting
$637
$637
Canvas Print
$50.70
$50.70
SKU: ING-2704
George Inness
Original Size: 64.5 x 97.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 64.5 x 97.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA
Hillside at Etretat 1876
Oil Painting
$599
$599
Canvas Print
$69.04
$69.04
SKU: ING-2705
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
Twilight 1875
Oil Painting
$420
$420
SKU: ING-2706
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
Kearsarge Village 1875
Oil Painting
$420
$420
SKU: ING-2707
George Inness
Original Size: 40.9 x 60.9 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 40.9 x 60.9 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
Castel Gandolfo 1876
Oil Painting
$586
$586
Canvas Print
$50.54
$50.54
SKU: ING-2708
George Inness
Original Size: 51 x 76.3 cm
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 51 x 76.3 cm
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon, USA
Landscape - Sunset 1870
Oil Painting
$377
$377
SKU: ING-2709
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
Commencement of the Galleria (Rome, the Appian Way 1870
Oil Painting
$646
$646
SKU: ING-2710
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
Coast Scene c.1857
Oil Painting
$337
$337
SKU: ING-2711
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
The Coming Storm 1872
Oil Painting
$420
$420
SKU: ING-2712
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica, USA
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica, USA
Passing Clouds 1876
Oil Painting
$544
$544
SKU: ING-2713
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
Spring 1860
Oil Painting
$337
$337
SKU: ING-2714
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
Sunset c.1860/65
Oil Painting
$285
$285
SKU: ING-2715
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection
The Coming Storm 1878
Oil Painting
$564
$564
Canvas Print
$50.54
$50.54
SKU: ING-2716
George Inness
Original Size: 66 x 97.8 cm
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 66 x 97.8 cm
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA
October 1886
Oil Painting
$556
$556
Canvas Print
$50.54
$50.54
SKU: ING-2717
George Inness
Original Size: 50.7 x 75.9 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 50.7 x 75.9 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, USA
Spirit of Autumn 1891
Oil Painting
$556
$556
Canvas Print
$50.83
$50.83
SKU: ING-2718
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 114.3 cm
Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 114.3 cm
Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, USA
Near the Village, October 1892
Oil Painting
$556
$556
Canvas Print
$50.54
$50.54
SKU: ING-2719
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 114.3 cm
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 114.3 cm
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, USA
St. Andrews, New Brunswick 1893
Oil Painting
$522
$522
Canvas Print
$96.36
$96.36
SKU: ING-2720
George Inness
Original Size: 82.6 x 108 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 82.6 x 108 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA
Evening at Medfield, Massachusetts 1869
Oil Painting
$331
$331
Canvas Print
$50.54
$50.54
SKU: ING-2721
George Inness
Original Size: 29.8 x 44.5 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 29.8 x 44.5 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA
A Bit of Roman Aqueduct c.1852
Oil Painting
$599
$599
Canvas Print
$55.71
$55.71
SKU: ING-3838
George Inness
Original Size: 99 x 135 cm
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 99 x 135 cm
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA
In the Berkshires c.1848/50
Oil Painting
$838
$838
Canvas Print
$70.75
$70.75
SKU: ING-5716
George Inness
Original Size: 61 x 56 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain
George Inness
Original Size: 61 x 56 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain
The Wood Chopper 1849
Oil Painting
$640
$640
Canvas Print
$63.37
$63.37
SKU: ING-6868
George Inness
Original Size: 50.5 x 60.6 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 50.5 x 60.6 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
Evening Landscape c.1862/63
Oil Painting
$576
$576
SKU: ING-8414
George Inness
Original Size: 120.6 x 166.3 cm
Washington State University Museum of Art, Pullman, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 120.6 x 166.3 cm
Washington State University Museum of Art, Pullman, USA
The Road to the Farm 1862
Oil Painting
$805
$805
SKU: ING-8423
George Inness
Original Size: 66 x 91.4 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 66 x 91.4 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
Monastery at Albano c.1875
Oil Painting
$379
$379
SKU: ING-8700
George Inness
Original Size: 25.4 x 33.6 cm
Private Collection
George Inness
Original Size: 25.4 x 33.6 cm
Private Collection