Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
George Inness
American; 19th-century
Seattle, WA: Henry Art Gallery
77%
Goochland, West Virginia. 1884. Oil on wood panel
What can be (but isn't always) remarkable about Inness's mature style is how blended and in flux each discrete region of his paintings can be, but then how cordoned off from each other — how almost alienated, obscure — these regions are made to appear within the totalities of the pictures they belong to. This painting's mottled green lower half is a galaxy of variegation and indefinable hue, but it's also very definitively (though, it bears mentioning, not cleanly or crisply) separate from what's above it: the sky and the trees and the outcrop of buildings. That birch to one side of the center, listing left, does a lot of work towards dividing up the image, but its presence isn't wholly sufficient for explaining the geometry of Inness's picture: in fact, none of the surefire lines that you see are wholly to blame for the painting's somehow clinical overall effect. What this painting is doing seems mostly to take place somewhere behind its visible surface, and only to seep through covertly to appearance. That's a little obscure, but so is Inness at his best. (TFS, 2026)
New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art
53%
Peace and Plenty. 1865. Oil on canvas
This is a somewhat early painting by Inness, from before he'd fully calibrated his impressionistish technique. The painting's large size doesn't do it any favors; all the room things have to breathe takes away much of the urgency of the artist's famous tonal mania. The tones are compelling, sure, especially in the way, for instance, the aureole around that tree at center spreads itself through the sky around it, dappling even the underbellies of the clouds in the far upper corners. But the shadows and hues in the foreground are a little ordinary, and the silhouetted figure cut by those trees is not as severe as it might have been. (Blakelock does darks and earthtones better than this, and his silhouettes always pack more of a punch.) (TFS, 2026)