INNESS, GEORGE

born May 1, 1825, Newburgh, N.Y., U.S. died Aug. 3, 1894, Bridge of Allen, Stirling, Scot. U.S. painter especially known for the luminous, atmospheric quality of his late landscapes. Inness was largely self-taught. Such early works as The Lackawanna Valley (1855; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) show the influence of Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole, painters of the Hudson River school. But the sweeping, loosely painted panoramas of the Dutch landscapists Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema turned him away from the Hudson River school's preoccupation with carefully rendered detail; and a third trip to Europe (1854) ended his initial period of experiment in subject and struggle against technical tightness. This stay abroad confirmed the already discernible influence of the French Barbizon school, led by Thodore Rousseau. It was through the two decades of his middle period (185574), including a stay in Rome and Paris (187074), that Inness ascended to the height of his powers with such works as the Delaware Water Gap (1861) and the Delaware Valley (1865; both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). The impressive Peace and Plenty (1865; Metropolitan Museum of Art) remains exceptional in his work for physical dimensions; his more characteristic smaller canvases depict both far-reaching expanses and lesser areas intimately rendered, exhibiting the influence of J.-B.-C. Corot. Inness' increasing control over space relations and scale, drawing, and colour was directed toward achieving the idyllic and the tranquil. His own temperament, by contrast, was stormy and passionate. He was interested in social questions, and argued heatedly for the single tax and for the abolition of slavery, but the deepest effect on him and his art came from his conversion to Swedenborgianism. The early works of his late period (187594), such as Autumn Oaks (c. 1875; Metropolitan Museum of Art), were marked by great concentration of feeling presaging the later ascendancy of colour over form. As his nature mysticism intensified, his pictures dissolved into shimmering colour, magnificent in itself and no longer supported by formal construction. His painter son, George Inness, Jr. (18541926), remained faithful to the practices of Barbizon and resisted Impressionism in obedience to his father's strongly expressed convictions.