
George Inness Painting Reproductions 4 of 9
1825-1894
American Romanticism Painter
George Inness occupies a singular place in American art - a painter who, across a career of more than four decades, refused to be contained by the descriptive exactitude of the Hudson River School or by the incandescent shimmer that would later mark Impressionism. Instead he pursued an elusive equilibrium between observation and evocation, convinced that landscape might speak both of earthbound fact and of metaphysical truth.
Born on 1 May 1825 in Newburgh, New York, the fifth of thirteen children, Inness spent his formative years in bustling Newark, New Jersey, where a brief apprenticeship to a map engraver sharpened his eye for structure while encouraging a dislike of the purely mechanical. Lessons with the French émigré Régis François Gignoux and evenings at the National Academy of Design acquainted him with the rhetorical grandeur of Thomas Cole and the calm lucidity of Asher Durand - models he would later splice rather than merely imitate.
A first European sojourn in 1851, financed by the patron Ogden Haggerty, placed Inness before the orderly pastorals of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Their measured harmonies impressed him less as formulae than as prompts: classical balance might, he sensed, conceal currents of feeling not immediately visible. Exposure to the Barbizon painters at mid-century reinforced that intuition. From Corot he absorbed the hush of twilight; from Daubigny the tactility of paint itself. By the time he returned to New York in the mid-1850s, he was recognised as the foremost American exponent of Barbizon tonalities, yet his ambition lay beyond stylistic allegiance.
The commission for The Lackawanna Valley around 1855 dramatised an early tension that would haunt his art: the locomotive arches across the foreground, smoke dissolving into cloud, while a boy surveys the scene from a grassy knoll. The image acknowledges technological prowess yet permits nature the last word, the grey plume merging with weather rather than conquering it. Even here, Inness’s brush modulates between crisp contour and atmospheric blur, hinting at the unseen energies he would later explore more fully.
That exploration deepened after his encounter with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose vision of a universe permeated by spiritual correspondences resonated with Inness’s instinctive pantheism. From the late 1870s his canvases pursue not topographical fidelity but an intimation of what he called “the reality of the unseen”. Forms soften, edges dissolve, tonal transitions thicken like half-remembered melodies. Early Morning - Tarpon Springs (c. 1877) presents Floridian pines as columns through which light filters in silent cadences, the subtropical rendered northern by mood rather than by botany.
Settling in Montclair, New Jersey in 1885, Inness intensified this idiom. October (1886) or Early Autumn, Montclair (1888) proceed by chromatic murmurs: russet, olive, tawny gold, each value calibrated to nudge the eye from surface sensation toward inward reflection. Technique grows freer, at times almost abrupt, yet the underlying architecture remains rigorously plotted. Such canvases remind us that for Inness the scientific study of colour and the mathematical poise of composition were not counters to poetry but its indispensable armature.
Critical esteem kept pace. Elected a full Academician in 1868, he garnered a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889, and in 1884 a retrospective organised by the American Art Association confirmed his stature at home. Yet honours meant less to him than the daily wrestle with pigment and idea. “The true use of art,” he wrote, “is to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature” - a statement that turns biography into credo.
Inness died on 3 August 1894 at Bridge of Allan in Scotland, collapsing after exclaiming at the splendour of a sunset - an end uncannily consonant with his life’s pursuit. His burial in Montclair closed a circle: the town whose vistas he had translated into meditations now shelters his remains. Today the Montclair Art Museum’s dedicated gallery attests to a legacy that is both regional and international. To view his late paintings is to experience an art poised between material immediacy and ineffable depth, an art that invites contemplation long after the eye has registered its gentle radiance.
Inness’s achievement lies not in any single manifesto but in a sustained attempt to align painting with the rhythms of perception and belief. He stands, therefore, as a pivotal figure: a witness to America’s industrial ascent, a student of European tradition, and, above all, a seeker who transcribed into paint the mutable dialogue between the visible world and the mysteries it shelters.
Born on 1 May 1825 in Newburgh, New York, the fifth of thirteen children, Inness spent his formative years in bustling Newark, New Jersey, where a brief apprenticeship to a map engraver sharpened his eye for structure while encouraging a dislike of the purely mechanical. Lessons with the French émigré Régis François Gignoux and evenings at the National Academy of Design acquainted him with the rhetorical grandeur of Thomas Cole and the calm lucidity of Asher Durand - models he would later splice rather than merely imitate.
A first European sojourn in 1851, financed by the patron Ogden Haggerty, placed Inness before the orderly pastorals of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Their measured harmonies impressed him less as formulae than as prompts: classical balance might, he sensed, conceal currents of feeling not immediately visible. Exposure to the Barbizon painters at mid-century reinforced that intuition. From Corot he absorbed the hush of twilight; from Daubigny the tactility of paint itself. By the time he returned to New York in the mid-1850s, he was recognised as the foremost American exponent of Barbizon tonalities, yet his ambition lay beyond stylistic allegiance.
The commission for The Lackawanna Valley around 1855 dramatised an early tension that would haunt his art: the locomotive arches across the foreground, smoke dissolving into cloud, while a boy surveys the scene from a grassy knoll. The image acknowledges technological prowess yet permits nature the last word, the grey plume merging with weather rather than conquering it. Even here, Inness’s brush modulates between crisp contour and atmospheric blur, hinting at the unseen energies he would later explore more fully.
That exploration deepened after his encounter with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose vision of a universe permeated by spiritual correspondences resonated with Inness’s instinctive pantheism. From the late 1870s his canvases pursue not topographical fidelity but an intimation of what he called “the reality of the unseen”. Forms soften, edges dissolve, tonal transitions thicken like half-remembered melodies. Early Morning - Tarpon Springs (c. 1877) presents Floridian pines as columns through which light filters in silent cadences, the subtropical rendered northern by mood rather than by botany.
Settling in Montclair, New Jersey in 1885, Inness intensified this idiom. October (1886) or Early Autumn, Montclair (1888) proceed by chromatic murmurs: russet, olive, tawny gold, each value calibrated to nudge the eye from surface sensation toward inward reflection. Technique grows freer, at times almost abrupt, yet the underlying architecture remains rigorously plotted. Such canvases remind us that for Inness the scientific study of colour and the mathematical poise of composition were not counters to poetry but its indispensable armature.
Critical esteem kept pace. Elected a full Academician in 1868, he garnered a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889, and in 1884 a retrospective organised by the American Art Association confirmed his stature at home. Yet honours meant less to him than the daily wrestle with pigment and idea. “The true use of art,” he wrote, “is to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature” - a statement that turns biography into credo.
Inness died on 3 August 1894 at Bridge of Allan in Scotland, collapsing after exclaiming at the splendour of a sunset - an end uncannily consonant with his life’s pursuit. His burial in Montclair closed a circle: the town whose vistas he had translated into meditations now shelters his remains. Today the Montclair Art Museum’s dedicated gallery attests to a legacy that is both regional and international. To view his late paintings is to experience an art poised between material immediacy and ineffable depth, an art that invites contemplation long after the eye has registered its gentle radiance.
Inness’s achievement lies not in any single manifesto but in a sustained attempt to align painting with the rhythms of perception and belief. He stands, therefore, as a pivotal figure: a witness to America’s industrial ascent, a student of European tradition, and, above all, a seeker who transcribed into paint the mutable dialogue between the visible world and the mysteries it shelters.
195 George Inness Paintings

Autumn Meadows 1869
Oil Painting
$768
$768
Canvas Print
$94.23
$94.23
SKU: ING-9155
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 115.6 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 115.6 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Sunrise 1887
Oil Painting
$706
$706
Canvas Print
$56.60
$56.60
SKU: ING-9156
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 114.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 76.2 x 114.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Delaware Water Gap 1861
Oil Painting
$807
$807
Canvas Print
$61.45
$61.45
SKU: ING-9157
George Inness
Original Size: 91.4 x 127.6 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 91.4 x 127.6 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

The Rising Storm (Hazy Morning) 1875
Oil Painting
$657
$657
SKU: ING-9158
George Inness
Original Size: 76.5 x 114.6 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 76.5 x 114.6 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Scene in Perugia 1875
Oil Painting
$752
$752
SKU: ING-9159
George Inness
Original Size: 98.4 x 160.3 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 98.4 x 160.3 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

The Church Spire 1875
Oil Painting
$645
$645
Canvas Print
$57.08
$57.08
SKU: ING-9160
George Inness
Original Size: 51.1 x 76.5 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 51.1 x 76.5 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Villa Borghese, Rome a.1857
Oil Painting
$418
$418
Canvas Print
$56.60
$56.60
SKU: ING-9161
George Inness
Original Size: 10.8 x 17.8 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 10.8 x 17.8 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Lake Nemi a.1874
Oil Painting
$473
$473
SKU: ING-9162
George Inness
Original Size: 30.8 x 46 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 30.8 x 46 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Lake Nemi 1872
Oil Painting
$714
$714
Canvas Print
$56.60
$56.60
SKU: ING-9163
George Inness
Original Size: 75.5 x 114 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 75.5 x 114 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Blue Niagara 1884
Oil Painting
$813
$813
SKU: ING-9164
George Inness
Original Size: 122.8 x 183.5 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 122.8 x 183.5 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Sunset Landscape, Medfield 1861
Oil Painting
$624
$624
Canvas Print
$56.60
$56.60
SKU: ING-9165
George Inness
Original Size: 71.4 x 101.9 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 71.4 x 101.9 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

The Lackawanna Valley c.1856
Oil Painting
$754
$754
Canvas Print
$57.55
$57.55
SKU: ING-9166
George Inness
Original Size: 86 x 127.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 86 x 127.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA

Lake Albano, Sunset c.1874
Oil Painting
$740
$740
Canvas Print
$57.40
$57.40
SKU: ING-9167
George Inness
Original Size: 76.5 x 114.4 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 76.5 x 114.4 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA

View of the Tiber near Perugia c.1872/74
Oil Painting
$784
$784
Canvas Print
$56.60
$56.60
SKU: ING-9168
George Inness
Original Size: 98 x 161.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 98 x 161.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA

The Delaware Water Gap a.1857
Oil Painting
$848
$848
Canvas Print
$94.03
$94.03
SKU: ING-9169
George Inness
Original Size: 90.5 x 138.5 cm
National Gallery, London, UK
George Inness
Original Size: 90.5 x 138.5 cm
National Gallery, London, UK

Golden Glow (The Golden Sun) 1894
Oil Painting
$671
$671
Canvas Print
$93.83
$93.83
SKU: ING-9170
George Inness
Original Size: 61 x 91.4 cm
Ball State University Museum of Art, Indiana, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 61 x 91.4 cm
Ball State University Museum of Art, Indiana, USA

Montclair, New Jersey c.1889
Oil Painting
$564
$564
Canvas Print
$70.12
$70.12
SKU: ING-9171
George Inness
Original Size: 40.6 x 60.9 cm
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Maine, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 40.6 x 60.9 cm
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Maine, USA

Sunrise 1887
Oil Painting
$688
$688
Canvas Print
$94.83
$94.83
SKU: ING-9172
George Inness
Original Size: 76.3 x 114.5 cm
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 76.3 x 114.5 cm
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA

Harvest Time 1861
Oil Painting
$684
$684
Canvas Print
$62.07
$62.07
SKU: ING-9173
George Inness
Original Size: 56.5 x 76.8 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 56.5 x 76.8 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA

A Winter Sky 1866
Oil Painting
$707
$707
Canvas Print
$62.39
$62.39
SKU: ING-9174
George Inness
Original Size: 56 x 77.5 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 56 x 77.5 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA

In the Woods 1866
Oil Painting
$449
$449
Canvas Print
$56.60
$56.60
SKU: ING-9175
George Inness
Original Size: 30.2 x 22.2 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 30.2 x 22.2 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA

Approaching Storm from the Alban Hills 1871
Oil Painting
$784
$784
Canvas Print
$56.62
$56.62
SKU: ING-9176
George Inness
Original Size: 73.8 x 113 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 73.8 x 113 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA

The Wheat Field c.1875/77
Oil Painting
$630
$630
Canvas Print
$56.62
$56.62
SKU: ING-9177
George Inness
Original Size: 50.8 x 76 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 50.8 x 76 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA

Fleecy Clouds 1881
Oil Painting
$858
$858
Canvas Print
$56.60
$56.60
SKU: ING-9178
George Inness
Original Size: 25.5 x 51 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
George Inness
Original Size: 25.5 x 51 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA