George Inness was an American painter of the nineteenth century who turned from the representative of traditional Hudson River School into a landscapist with his personal expressive style.
His brilliant and atmospheric landscapes were based on his philosophical and spiritual ideas inspired in turn by the design and abstraction principles of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and by the spiritual reflections of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Background
George Inness was born on May 1, 1825, in Newburgh, New York, United States. He was the fifth of thirteen children in a family of John William Inness, a farmer, and Clarissa Baldwin.
When George was five years old, the family relocated to Newark, New Jersey.
Inness’s father expected his son to become a grocer but from an early age, George revealed his artistic abilities.
Education
George Inness received his first art lessons from an itinerant artist John Jesse Barker at the age of fourteen. In a couple of years, he became an apprentice at the map engravers firm called ‘Sherman and Smith’. Soon, Inness left it and developed his painting skills making sketches from nature.
In 1845, he was briefly trained by a French landscapist Régis François Gignoux. In addition, George Inness attended the classes at the National Academy of Design and met Hudson River School.
At the beginning of the next decade, sponsored by his patron Ogden Haggerty he traveled to Italy. While in the country, Inness learned the art of such great masters as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Then, he visited Paris where he adopted some principles of the Barbizon school.
In general, George Inness was in most part an autodidact artist who never stopped to teach himself.
Career
The start of George Inness’s artistic career can be counted from the exhibition at the National Academy of Design in 1844 where the artist presented to the public one of his early artworks. It also launched the beginning of a long and successful collaboration with the Academy. The following year, Inness established a studio in New York City and received the support of his first patrons. By the end of the decade, he was acclaimed by artistic community and had a decent income from the sales at the American Art Union.
In 1855, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad commissioned George Inness to record its growth in the industrial world of America. The commission resulted in the canvas called ‘The Lackawanna Valley’ which successfully united technology and wilderness reflecting Inness’s new breadth of light and atmosphere as well as more opened composition and a freshness in the interpretation of paint.
At the beginning of the next decade, Inness briefly worked in a studio in Montague Place, Brooklyn and then moved to Medfield, Massachusetts. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, he tried to join the army but was rejected because of a fragile health. However, the artist helped the soldiers providing them with money he earned from selling his paintings, organizing rallies and giving speeches.
In 1864, Inness relocated to Perth Amboy, New Jersey where he joined the teacher’s staff of the Eagleswood Military Academy as a painting instructor. About this time, he met the artist William Page who introduced him to the philosophical views of Emanuel Swedenborg. Three years later, George Inness exhibited at the Universal Exposition in Paris for the first time.
During the first half of the 1870s, the artist traveled throughout the United States, England and Europe exhibiting his works and meeting fellow artists. In 1878, he came back to America and settled down in the Boston studio. This year, Inness co-founded Society of American Artists and moved to a studio based in the New York University Building. He took part for the second time at the Universal Exposition in Paris and also demonstrated his canvases at the National Academy of Design in New York City. Besides, he tried his hand as an art critic in the New York Evening Post and Harper's New Monthly Magazine.
The most significant events of the next decade included the huge retrospective held by the American Art Association in 1884 and the third participation at the Universal Exposition five years later. George Innes signed a contract with a Parisian art gallery Boussod, Valadon & Co. for which he produced paintings during the next ten years.
In 1891, Georges Inness travelled around the West Coast of the United States visiting San Diego, Los Angeles, Yosemite, and San Francisco where he participated at the exhibition organized by the San Francisco Art Association. In a couple of years, he exhibited fourteen canvases at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.
Inness’s late artworks had some mystical components, the forms and shapes of saturated color palette became more abstract and impressionistic.
Georges Inness spent the last year of his life travelling around Europe and England.
A adherent of Swedenborgianism, George Inness believed in spirituality of nature and God’s influence on it. Besides, the artist shared William James’s view of consciousness as a “stream of thought” and his belief in the influence of mystical experience on the human’s perception of nature.
Quotations:
"The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual nature."
"The greatness of art is not in the display of knowledge, or in material accuracy, but in the distinctness with which it conveys the impressions of a personal vital force, that acts spontaneously, without fear or hesitation."
"The purpose of the painter is simply to reproduce in other minds the impression which a scene has made upon him. A work of art does not appeal to the intellect. It does not appeal to the moral sense. Its aim is not to instruct, not to edify, but to awaken an emotion."
"The true end of art is not to imitate a fixed material condition, but to represent a living motion."
"You must suggest to me reality – you can never show me reality."
Membership
National Academy of Design
,
United States
1868
Boston Art Club
,
United States
1871
Personality
George Inness was a temperamental and enthusiastic person. He was an uneven artist and often his investigations in the field had no success.
Physical Characteristics:
In 1890, George Inness broke his right arm. After learning to paint with the left hand, the artist received $12,000 for a painting commissioned by Potter Palmer.
Quotes from others about the person
"American landscape Tonalist painter driven by a zealous spirit to portray truth in nature." William Tylee Ranney Abbott, the great great great grandson of an American painter William Tylee Ranney
Interests
Barbizon school
Philosophers & Thinkers
Emanuel Swedenborg, William James
Artists
Charles-François Daubigny, Henri Rousseau, James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Connections
George Inness was married twice.
His first wife became Delia Miller in 1848. In a couple of months, she died.
The next year, on October, he formed the family with Elizabeth Abigail Hart. They had six children, three girls and two boys.
George Inness and the Science of Landscape
The in-depth examination of Inness's career, the book demonstrates how the artistic, spiritual, and scientific aspects of his art found expression in his masterful landscapes
2007
George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonne
This catalogue raisonné of Inness’s drawings, watercolors, and paintings makes available many works that have never before been exhibited or published and vividly illustrates the wide range of his art
2007
George Inness and the Visionary Landscape
The eloquent examination of Inness' most important paintings illuminates his philosophical and religious preoccupations, overviews his life and situates him within the contexts of key issues in American history