Sunday Evening Art Gallery — George Inness

George Inness (1825 -1894) was an American painter known especially for the luminous, atmospheric quality of his late landscapes.His work was influenced by that of the old masters, the Hudson River school, the Barbizon school, and, finally, by the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose spiritualism found vivid expression in the work of Inness’ maturity.Often called “the father of American landscape painting,” Inness is best known for these mature works that not only exemplified the Tonalist movement but also displayed an original and uniquely American style.Inness’ landscape paintings offer a cultural space as much as a natural space.The vogue in nineteenth-century American painting was for vast canvases in which all human activity was excised from the scene to suggest an untamed wilderness.But Inness was more concerned with expressing the interaction of humankind with the landscapes which they made their own.In this sense, his paintings represent a uniquely optimistic view of social progress in the nineteenth century, which might bring about a new era of harmony between humanity and nature.