
George Inness Artworks
American Painter
Movements and Styles: The Hudson River School, Tonalism, The Barbizon School, Naturalism
Born: May 1, 1825 - Newburgh, New York
Died: August 3, 1894 - Bridge of Allen, Stirling, Scotland

Artworks by George InnessThe below artworks are the most important by George Inness - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist. | |
![]() ![]() | The Lackawanna Valley (c. 1855)Artwork description & Analysis: This is one of George Inness's earliest pieces, produced while he was still a struggling young artist for the first president of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad. Inness was paid $75 for the composition, which includes a mixture of pastoral and industrial elements. A picturesque scene of fields on the outskirts of Scranton, Pennsylvania is cut through with the tracks of the growing railroad. In the foreground we see stumps of trees felled to make way for progress, and the figure of a reclining man looking on at the approaching train. (The scene was in fact partially invented: Inness was aggrieved to be asked to add more tracks than existed, exaggerate the prominence of the roundhouse, and paint the company logo on the train.) Two sets of track meet in the middle, leading the eye to the steam engine and its roundhouse beyond. Beyond this, the eye is drawn to the steeple of a church, picked out in black beyond the white locomotive steam, while further afield the gentle Pennsylvanian hills are rendered in calming blues and purples. Oil on canvas - The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. |
![]() ![]() | The Delaware Water Gap (c. 1857)Artwork description & Analysis: This work, like The Lackawanna Valley, depicts the emerging North-American steam train network, but the prominence of the locomotive is far more diminished. He we see the Delaware Water Gap on the border of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In the foreground, the rocks and grasses are darkened by cloud-cover, which are luminously rendered above, predicating the effects of Tonalism. The work also hints at the effects of Impressionism; although Inness would dismiss the school on a trip to France 13 years later, this work partly comprises a delicate study of light in the style of European proto-Impressionists such as Corot. A rainbow arcs from the earth to the left of the canvas, while the drizzle and mist are rendered in glazes of white and yellow as rain falls on the Kittatinny Mountains. In the flat, tranquil water cows wallow, while figures bob on a raft beyond, up the Delaware River. Houses are picked out among the trees while a small dark train steams out of the canvas to the left. Again, we see the contrast of man and earth, nature and machine, working together in quiet harmony. Oil on canvas - The National Gallery, London |
![]() ![]() | Peace and Plenty (1865)Artwork description & Analysis: Inness continued to battle the artistic norms promoted by the Hudson River School into the middle years of his career, as exemplified by this large and lush canvas. Favoring the pastoral over the grandiose, Inness renders Peace and Plenty in soft brushstrokes of copper, gold, and green, heralding the beginnings of the Tonalist movement as he carefully plays with color and composition to suggest spiritual harmony. Here we see workers setting down their tools at the end of a long day of harvesting. The fruits of their labors, sheaths of wheat tethered and piled, shine in the warm golden twilight. Inness again brings together nature and industry, with the enveloping glow of the sunset, hidden behind the central tree, uniting the different elements of the scene. The slow-moving river, the distant houses, and the blue and pink sky, all convey a sense of peace, a mood emphasized by Inness's use of enriched pigments. Oil on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
![]() ![]() | The Monk (1873)Artwork description & Analysis: This is one of Inness's more mysterious and evocative works, characteristic of his deeply spiritual nature. The piece shows a white shrouded monk walking with his head bowed in the twilight. His advancing years are suggested by his bowed spine and the hint of a stick, implied by a single dab of white paint. The figure walks in the darkness amongst the olive trees of Albano, in Inness's beloved Italy, while enormous black silhouetted pines tower over him forming a horizontal band across the yellow and ochre sky. The scene is set in Villa Barberini, near Castel Gandolfo, a summer residence of the Pope. As such, it was frequently depicted in religious and landscape art of the time. Oil on canvas - Addison Gallery of American Art, Massachusetts |
![]() ![]() | Niagara (1889)Artwork description & Analysis: This bold work represents a late stylistic departure for Inness. He returns to the themes of the great American landscapists, but whereas Frederic Edwin Church's famous painting of the Niagara Falls (1857) offers mesmeric hypernaturalism, Inness opts instead to express the noise and power of the falls through expressive paintwork and romantic color effects. The viewer is placed in an elevated position on the American bank, looking towards the bottom fifth of the canvas, which is populated in the foreground by shrubbery and people. Most of the composition, however, is given over to the blues and greens of cascading water, crashing noisily into the center of the composition and giving way to clouds of vapor. A dark and stormy sky makes up the top third of the composition; but whereas a common device of the Hudson River school was to omit all signs of human or industrial activities, Inness depicts a towering chimney belching out purple smoke that merges with the gray black sky. Oil on canvas - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. |
![]() ![]() | Sunset in the Woods (1891)Artwork description & Analysis: This work, painted just three years before Inness's death, exemplifies his ongoing commitment to independence as an artist. There is not so much a story to be told by the piece as a feeling to be conveyed, presented through the image of a dark, almost magical-seeming wood at twilight. No human figures or animals can be seen, and the gloaming obscures most of the detail. Illuminated in yellow golds, the canvas draws the eye to a beech tree in the center-right, met by a horizontal band of green forest-floor stretching across the lower center of the work. A looming rock structure blocks out light from behind. Beyond this, a strip of green light can be seen, with further illuminated trees in the background. The overall impression is of an ethereal and ghostly silence. Oil on canvas - Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. |
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Content compiled and written by Sarah Ingram
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Greg Thomas
" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Sarah Ingram
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Greg Thomas
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First published on 30 Nov 2019. Updated and modified regularly.
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