ABOUT THE ARTIST

George Inness was born on May 1, 1825, in Newburgh, New York and spent his childhood in Newark, New Jersey. His minimal artistic training consisted of a brief stint working with the itinerant painter John Jesse Barker and apprenticeships at two engraving companies in New York. In 1843, Inness trained under the French émigré artist Régis Gignoux, with whom he studied the techniques of the old masters. Inness opened his own studio in New York in 1846.

In 1851-52, shortly after getting married, Inness spent fifteen months in Italy, followed by a visit to France in 1853. He became acquainted with the Barbizon painting of Théodore Rousseau and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, inspiring him to work with more informal compositions and greater simplicity.

In 1863, Inness returned to New Jersey, where he was introduced to the religious theories of Emanuel Swedenborg and began an important friendship with the painter William Page. Throughout the 1860s, Inness’s paintings continued to reflect the influence of the Barbizon artists’ light and color. In 1868, as the American art world began to welcome the softer, more personal style of Barbizon painting, Inness was elected to the National Academy of Design.

In the 1870s, after stints in Rome and Manhattan, Inness settled in Montclair, New Jersey. His late paintings reflect his greater involvement with Swedenborgianism and his desire to do more than simply record nature. During this time, Inness experimented with color, composition, and painterly technique as he sought to express the relationship between the physical and the spiritual realms. He is best known for his signature style of softly modeled, ethereal landscapes. After his death in 1894, Inness’s reputation soared; his work inspired a generation of poetic landscape painters, and today he stands as one of America’s most influential artists.