10 minute read
George Inness — Painter of the Delaware Water Gap
By Marie Liu
Considered by many to be America’s, even the worlds greatest landscape painter and hailed as the ‘father’ of a particular American school of painting, George Inness focused his creative eye and brush on the Delaware Water Gap for many of his canvases, painting no other scene more often or for so many years. His life’s work mirrored and influenced a cultural shift in taste from the prior century’s European romantic genre to landscape painting that depicted the dynamic, sublime and awesome beauty of the American landscape. For over 15 years the panoramic scene of Mt. Tamminy and Mt. Minsi bookending the Delaware River became his template to express spiritual forces through the landscape, from lightdrenched pastoral and agrarian scenes, approaching ominous storms, warm peaceful sunsets to serenely misty realms. Although the Gap’s scenery was depicted by other painters, such as Thomas Doughty and Thomas
> Delaware Water Gap, 1859
Birch; and engravings by Asher Durand, Granville Perkins, and Worthington Whittredge (these prints appearing in popular travel books such as Picturesque America and American Landscape), but Inness alone adopted the scene and returned to it over and over again, revealing its and his many moods. One early twentieth century author remarked:
“He brought a large vision and a poetic insight to the interpretation of the casual, familiar scenes, surprising beauty where others had found only suburban triviality. The despised hills of New Jersey and the undiscovered Delaware valley took their place in our art with the Grand Canon and Yosemite Valley.”
He was born in the Hudson valley’s Newburgh New York in 1825, then grew up in Newark, New Jersey on a farm. Moving frequently between Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Europe, he eventually settled in Montclair to live out his final seventeen years.
George Inness came of age during the formation of the Hudson River School, whose artists viewed nature and the American landscape as a divine creation and represented it with crisp clarity and precise brushwork. In his earlier paintings, he is influenced by the Hudson River School style but maintained his own individuality and independence from that group and in time would move away from their particular doctrine. While the Hudson River school sought and created images of epic and heroic proportions, Inness was more interested in the ordinary agrarian scenes shaped by simple people going about their chores, immersed in surroundings made grand by the artists expressive use of color, brushstroke, and dramatic treatment of the sky. Eventually moving away from the strict preoccupation with the carefully rendered detail of the Hudson River school, he instead continued to explore light and color on a freer and more personal, spiritual level. He did however continue to share with them the notion of the importance of landscape as subject and belief that within the landscape one could find and relay higher moral truths.
> Delaware Water Gap, 1861
> The Lackawanna Valley, 1855
> Delaware Valley, 1860
> New Jersey Landscape, 1891
While the group of Hudson River school painters gravitated to the Catskills and Adirondacks (the region in which their namesake was located, and founder Thomas Cole lived) for much of their inspiration, Inness would independently focus much of his attention on the Delaware River valley instead. One such large painting titled Delaware Water Gap 1861 now hangs prominently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1855 he was commissioned by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad to create paintings of early industrial America, documenting the progress of the railroads in order to entice travelers with scenes of new destinations. Depicting the railroad’s first roundhouse at Scranton, he contrasts technology against a swath of tree stumps, seeming to imply that the young man in the foreground is pondering the impact of industrialization on the American wilderness. Perhaps this is a clue to his own inner feelings about industrialization and its impact on the American landscape.
Several other of his Gap images may also have been part of this series. There are trains featured in the landscape and timber rafts navigating the Delaware river, but these paintings represent a more harmonious integration between agrarian and industrial than that of the Lackawanna Valley painting. In time he would shun depictions of industry altogether, favoring bucolic scenes as were plentiful in the Delaware valley. The DL&W Railroad campaigns seemed to have proven successful, as the new railroad line brought many visitors to the area, creating the booming resort culture that would transform the region.
He traveled to Europe several times, once staying for four years (a pilgrimage that was virtually mandatory of serious artists of the day) to paint the Italian and French landscape and to study European art. During these trips Inness came under the
> Delaware Water Gap 1857,
Montclair Art Museum
> Harvest Scene in the Delaware Valley, 1867
influence of the French Barbizon school, whose landscapes were noted for loose brushwork, harmonious and muted palette, diffused light, and emphasis on mood and sentiment. This would further distinguish his work from the prevailing style and became known as Tonalism. Tonalism became an American art movement that emerged in the 1880’s and its popularity continued well into the twentieth century. Being the ‘father’ of this new American movement secured his own success and standing in the art world for the rest of his life.Inness’s New Jersey Landscape 1891 exemplifies some of the main qualities of Tonalism that would mark the new approach to landscape painting that he inspired here in America. By the 1890’s Tonalism was well on its way to becoming everything that the still dominant (but getting tired) Hudson River style wasn’t: evocative images executed within a limited and harmonious
palette, subtle tonal dynamics, more twilights than daylights, and a preference for the intimate over the grand, favoring the civilized landscape of ordinary shrubs and cultivated fields that were commonly seen, unlike the Hudson River artists bombastic views of a wild and exotic North America. He would challenge
their grandiose expressions, as exemplified in the now famous painting titled Peace and Plenty. Here the artist portrays farmers in the field finishing their work as the sun sets. The fruit of their labors, sheaths of hay, symbolic of a plentiful promised land here on American soil. The warm rays of the sunset peacefully unifying man and his industry. Inness’s work remained popular well beyond that of the Hudson River school, which fell out of favor in the early 20th century and was further challenged by the new Impressionism movement. Inness himself disapproved of Impressionism, although his work would increasingly become more light, airy and atmospheric.
Inness would come to be considered not only a leading American artist, but also philosopher. Originally exposed to the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg in Europe and again at the utopian colony of Eagleswood near Perth Amboy in 1864.
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> Peace and Plenty, 1865
Metropolitan Museum of Art
> On the Delaware, 1863, Brooklyn Museum
> Sunset
Inness lived for a time at Eagleswood at the request of founder Marcus Spring who intended to surround the community with literary and artistic intellectuals. Though he never paid rent, Inness presented Marcus with his painting Peace and Plenty as compensation, which is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
His work would be forevermore influenced by the transcendental teachings of Swedenborgism. His paintings would increasingly reflect and emphasize his belief in the union between the physical and spiritual realms and serve his intention to use nature to communicate spiritual and poetic impressions, rather than realistic detail. His progressive and egalitarian ideals would be apparent in his desire to feature the simple common man within his landscapes.
Eventually settling in Montclair, New Jersey, he would spend the rest of his life producing much of his mature work in the studio using visual memory and imagination, and created some of his most important paintings of that surrounding countryside. His presence in Montclair inspired the formation of the Inness Colony of landscape painters (which included his son George Inness Jr.) and provided the impetus for the establishment of the Montclair Art Museum. The museum now has a large number of Inness’ paintings in their collection and a special room dedicated to the permanent exhibit of his paintings.
During his third trip to Europe in 1894, Inness died at the Bridge of Allan in Stirling, Scotland. According to his son, he was viewing the sunset, threw up his hands and exclaimed, “My God! Oh, how beautiful!” Fell to the ground, and died minutes later.
Marie Liu moved to Milford from New York State in 2009. Her work since then has been entirely focused on elements of the region that she seeks to reveal through her paintings. She was honored to be the Resident Artist of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area for one year, from 2015 - 16. Focusing her creative energies on exploring and interpreting the Park through all four seasons, researching the history, and engaging with visitors was a highpoint of her professional life; culminating in exhibits at Kittatinny and Dingmans visitors centers. She not only portrayed the beauty of the Park, but was also cognizant of it’s unique history, and strove to portray that in her paintings. Her work can be seen at the ARTery Gallery in Milford, a cooperative that is owned and operated by artists. Visit her website at https://mliuart.com and view videos about her experience as Resident Artist and her affinity for Pinchot and Grey Towers on her You Tube channel: Marie Liu Art.
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