Fine Canvas Art Blog

The Coming Storm by George Inness, 1878

Inness / Paintings (Reproductions) - 2 years ago - troycapc

There is a reproduction of George Inness’ “The Coming Storm” of 1878. This is a fine example of the American style of landscape art which arose out of the Hudson River School and was influenced by the French Barbizon School. George Inness was instrumental in establishing a strong and independent mode of producing fine art, particularly of landscapes. This work is currently in the Museum of Art at the Munson Williams Proctor Institute in Utica, New York.

The Hudson River School arose in the 1830’s as a Romantic landscape glorification of American scenes. It began with the successes of Thomas Cole really from the 1820’s and continued into a second generation of artists, prominent among whom were Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt in the 1850’s and through 70’s. It was into this milieu that Inness was introduced early in his life.

George Inness was born on May 1, 1825 in Newburgh, New York to farmers and was raised in New Jersey. He came to the attention of French landscape artist Regis Francois Gignoux while he was a teenaged map-engraver in New York City. He attended classes at the National Academy of Design and studied the works of the Hudson River School.

When he was twenty-six Inness was sponsored in a trip to Europe where he rented a room above painter William Page in Rome and was introduced to the theology of Immanuel Swedenborg. Among other tenets, Swedenborgism maintained that there is a connection, or correspondence between the spiritual plane or world and the physical plane of existence. Its adherents also looked upon the traditional Biblical narrative as a spiritual description of the human individual’s transformation from a physical into a spiritual existence. These ideas appealed to Inness who increasingly felt that it was the purpose of art to express the spiritual nature of the artist.

While in Rome Inness was also introduced to the Barbizon school of landscape painting from France. It accentuated a looser brushwork, darker palette and emphasis on mood in landscapes. The Barbizon School had been inspired in France by the 1824 exhibition of the works of the English artist John Constable. The exhibition inspired many younger artists to use Nature as the subjects of their works. They increasingly did so and by the revolutionary year of 1848 the Barbizon School was dominant among younger European artists. It was therefore dominant among the painters of Inness’ own age in 1851.

When he returned to America, Inness became the leading American exponent of the Barbizon School and he developed a noted personal style. Beginning in the middle 1850’s Inness began his profuse production of landscapes. He became one of the most successful American painters of landscapes and his were characterized by panoramic views with cloudy and threatening skies.

In the last decades of his life, Inness’ work became more intimate with more personal, spontaneous and sometimes violent utilization of the brush. This differentiated him from the Luminist landscape artists in America but he became a leading Tonalist artist with James McNiell Whistler. Tonalism promotes the utilization of darker palettes and Tonalist work is more easily associated with moonlight and less bright conditions. Inness in particular favored subdued lighting and stormy conditions. While on a trip to Scotland on August 3, 1894, Inness was viewing a sunset when he threw up his hands and shouted, “My God! Oh, how beautiful!” He collapsed and died a few minutes later on the Bridge of Allen at Stirling.