George Inness

George Inness, in an 1867 engraving.

George Inness (Newburgh, New York, 1825 - Bridge of Allan, Scotland, 1894) was an American landscape painter who evolved from the romanticism of the Hudson River School towards the aesthetic approaches of the Barbizon School, the result of his frequent trips to Europe and his admiration for the work of Claudio Lorena.

He began painting at the hands of John Jesse Barker, a traveling painter passing through Newark. In 1841 he moved to New York City where he furthered his training with the French painter Régis François Gignoux, a student of Paul Delaroche, and made his first exhibitions, at the National Academy of Design in 1844 and the following year at the American Art Union..

He made his first trip to Europe in 1851, traveling through Italy for a year, and his second European tour in 1853, visiting Holland and France, where he came into contact with the work of Théodore Rousseau, which would lead him to abandon the literary emphasis and rigidity in favor of the style of the Barbizon painters. His weak health forced him to limit his traveling spirit, settling in 1861 in Medfield, on the outskirts of Boston, and in 1864 in Eagleswood, where he came into contact with the mysticism of the Swedish writer Emanuel Swedenborg through the painter William Page.

Signature of George Inness in 1885

After participating in the creation of the Society of American Artists and already fully recognized, he traveled again to Italy in 1870, where he lived for four years, and after a brief season in France he returned to America. In 1878 he set up his studio on a farm in Montclair (New Jersey), although he continued to travel the country (Niagara Falls, Virginia, and California). He died in 1894 while on a trip to Scotland.

He was followed by his son George Innes Jun (1854-1926), who wrote the biography of his father in The Life, Art and Letters of George Inness, published in 1917.

Style

Following the work of painters such as Thomas Cole and Asher Durand, Innes evolved from the detailed Romantic nature painting of the Hudson River School – as seen in The Lackawanna Valley (1856, National Gallery of Art)–, towards the work of John Constable and the Barbizon painters, in examples such as the watercolors painted in his last stay in Rome.

• 

  Oil of the Lackawanna Valley

• 

  Aquarella of the Olives of Tivoli