George Inness

If you've ever pulled off the side of a road just to watch a dramatic storm roll in, the American landscape painter George Inness (1825-1894) is your special friend. With no formal training, Inness gained his education through extensive European travel, where he learned to emphasize mood over minutia at France' Barbizon School and the ability to depict fading light in Italy. Upon returning to the US, he injected a palpable sense of atmosphere into landscape painting that the famed Hudson River School often lacked. As his career continued, his adherence to the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, in which every moment in nature was seen as direct evidence of the divine, became increasingly apparent. Painting less from observation and more from memory, his work became a more tonal and sensory experience, á la Whistler. To his credit, however, he never fully jumped into the Impressionist lily pond, avoiding the copycat nature of wan American Impressionists like William Merritt Chase. Inness was much too independent to be swayed by any passing trend. Resolutely humble, his works are smaller in scale compared to the majority of Hudson River School paintings. They emit a tiny magic that is a result of a personal and spiritual journey rather than any desire to impress patrons with the grandiose.