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GEORGE INNESS (1825-1894)

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Originally appearing in Volume V14, Page 577 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GEORGE See also:INNESS (1825-1894)  , See also:American landscape painter, was See also:born near See also:Newburgh, N.Y., on the 1st of May 1825 . Before he was five years of See also:age his parents had moved to New See also:York and afterwards to See also:Newark, N.J., in which latter See also:city his boyhood was passed . He would not " take See also:education " at the See also:town See also:academy, nor was he a success as a greengrocer's boy . He had a strong See also:bent towards See also:art, and his parents finally placed him with a See also:drawing-See also:master named See also:Barker . At sixteen he went to New York to study See also:engraving, but soon returned to Newark, where he continued sketching and See also:painting after his own initiative . In 1843 he was again in New York, and is said to have passed a See also:month in Gignoux's studio . But he was too impetuous, too See also:independent in thought, to accept teaching; and, besides, the knowledge of his teachers must have been limited . Practically he was self-taught, and always remained a student . In 1851 he went to See also:Europe, and in See also:Italy got his first glimpse of real art . He was there two years, and imbibed some traditions of the classic landscape . In 18J4 he went to See also:France, and there studied the See also:Barbizon painters, whom he greatly admired, especially See also:Daubigny and See also:Rousseau . After his return to See also:America he opened a studio in New York, then went to Medfield, See also:Mass., where he resided for five years .

A See also:

pastoral landscape near this town inspired the characteristic painting " The Medfield Meadows." Again he went abroad and spent six years in Europe . He came back to New York in 1876, and lived there, or near there, until the See also:year of his See also:death, which took See also:place at See also:Bridge of See also:Allan on the 3rd of See also:August 1894 while he was travelling in See also:Scotland . He was a See also:National Academician, a member of the Society of American Artists, and had received many honours at See also:home and abroad . He was married twice, his son, See also:George See also:Inness (b . 1854), being also a painter . Inness was emphatically a See also:man of temperament, of moods, enthusiasms, convictions . He was fond of See also:speculation and experiment in See also:metaphysics and See also:religion, as in See also:poetry and art . Swedenborgianism, symbolism, See also:socialism, appealed to him as they might to a mystic or an idealist . He aspired to the perfect unities, and was impatient of structural See also:foundations . This was xiv . 19his attitude towards painting . He sought the sentiment, the See also:light, See also:air, and See also:colour of nature, but was put out by nature's forms .

How to subordinate See also:

form without causing weakness was his problem, as it was See also:Corot's . His See also:early education gave him no See also:great technical facility, so that he never was satisfied with his achievement . He worked over his pictures incessantly, retouching with paint, See also:pencil, See also:coal, See also:ink—anything that would give the desired effect—yet never content with them . In his latter days it was almost impossible to get a picture away from him, and after his death his studio was found to be full of experimental canvases . He was a very uneven painter, and his experiments were not always successful . His was an See also:original—a distinctly American—mind in art .. Most of his American subjects were taken from New York See also:state, New See also:Jersey and New See also:England . His point of view was his own . At his best he was often excellent in poetic sentiment, and superb in light, air and colour . He had several styles: at first he was somewhat grandiloquent in See also:Roman scenes, but sombre in colour; then under See also:French See also:influence his See also:brush See also:grew looser, as in the " See also:Grey Lowering See also:Day "; finally he See also:broke out in full colour and light, as in the " See also:Niagara " and the last " See also:Delaware See also:Water-See also:Gap." Some of his pictures are in American museums, but most of them are in private hands . (J . C .

End of Article: GEORGE INNESS (1825-1894)
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