Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,203

This is the grave of George Inness.

Born in 1825 in Newburgh, New York, Inness grew up mostly in Newark, New Jersey. He became interested in art and painting. That could mean practical work as well as pure art and he apprenticed with a mapmaker in New York starting in 1839 or 1840. But his real interest was painting. New York was hardly the center of the art world in the early 19th century, but it was becoming a more important place by the year. The French painter Régis François Gignoux moved to New York in 1840 to marry an American woman and he soon met Inness. He thought the kid had a lot of potential, so he took him under his wing. This was also the era of the Hudson River School, the first major movement in American art. Inness was really influenced by painters such as Thomas Cole and Asher Durand. So he worked on his painting and in 1848, opened a studio in New York.

But really, what kind of art education could one get in the 1840s in New York? This might be ridiculous on the face of it, or just snobbery. On the other hand, when I was in Chile this summer, I went to most of the major museums in Santiago, the capital of a middle class country, or even upper middle class on a global scale. And what I noticed was that while there was very good art in all of them, there were very very few paintings by anyone I had ever heard of, fewer than, say, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, not to mention the MFA in Boston or the big New York museums. In other words, especially in the age when you couldn’t see things on the internet or even great copies in art books, you really did have to travel to Europe in order to see the best art and traveling to study the best art is still critical today for young artists.

Anyway, Inness was quite open to European influences. In 1851, a patron of his paid for him to go to Europe. I need that kind of patron. He stayed 15 months, mostly in Rome, but also Paris, where he return frequently. He was deeply influenced by the Barbizon School, which I have to admit has never much moved me. But realistic portrayals of rural life were very popular in the mid 19th century so I am not going to question its importance in art history, even if these are paintings most people kind of move past quickly in museums today. He brought this back to the U.S. and was a leading exponent of the school here. This kind of thing also really worked well for American art patrons who saw the glory of their young nation as pushing back the wilderness. So, for example, one of Inness’ major early commissions was by the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad for a giant canvas showing the roiling back of the evil forests by the railroad, with stumps everywhere that prepared that land to be turned into farmland, what God intended with land. So a nice rural landscape showing transformation by humans into farms was catnip for mid 19th century Americans.

As he grew as an artist, Inness remained a major landscape painter. Even that earlier railroad work was too industrial for him. As the United States industrialized, his work was a rejection of that, focusing on bucolic rural spaces. He also got deeply involved in Swedenborgianism. He was probably introduced to these ideas on his first trip to Europe by the 1870s at least, he was a full-fledged follower. Of course, he was far from alone in this era; William James among others were majorly influenced by all of this. It really comes through in Inness’s art, the idea of relationships in nature that came from God and were thus inherently spiritual would have a lot to say to someone interested in bucolic landscape painting. So a lot of Inness’s works stress majestic light and such.

By the 1880s, Inness was one of the most beloved American artists. He got a major retrospective in 1884 by the American Art Association and this at a time when the entire idea of an art retrospective and museums themselves were only being created. He was featured at the 1889 Paris Exhibition as well, winning a big medal and coming more to the attention of the European community. He wasn’t much influenced by impressionism though, remaining by this time pretty old-fashioned in comparison to those pioneers. But that certainly didn’t hurt his commissions in the United States.

Inness’s later work continued to be infused with his spiritual ideas in nature. He moved around a lot, with artist cabins in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Florida, as well as his work in cities, which gave him exposure to a lot of different environments in which to work. His son George Jr. would become an important painter as well. George Sr claimed, “The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature.” Maybe, I guess, I don’t know. Why not, whatever works for the artist I suppose. This kind of attitude certainly fit him well enough.

Inness died while traveling in Scotland in 1894. His son probably created some overly dramatic telling of it. The claim by George Jr is that George Sr “threw up his hands into the air and exclaimed, “My God! oh, how beautiful!” I mean, maybe, but if that doesn’t sound like a cheap late 19th century novel, I don’t know what does. In any case, it was probably a heart attack of some kind. Inness was 69 years old.

Today, many of Inness’s works are concentrated at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, which has 24 of his paintings. His works are pretty scattered across the nation though, so it’s not like you have to go a minor New Jersey museum to see his work if you are so inclined after reading this post. And I know how inclined grave posts make one when it comes to art.

Let’s look at some of Inness’s work.

George Inness is buried in Rosedale Cemetery, Montclair, New Jersey.

If you would like this series to visit other 19th century American artists, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Thomas Cole is in Catskill, New York and Asher Durand is in Brooklyn. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.