Listed Hudson River School Artist George Inness (1825-1894) Signed Oil Sketch

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Seller: mccartinvestments ✉️ (8,313) 100%, Location: Hudson, New York, US, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 254223930707 Listed Hudson River School Artist George Inness (1825-1894) Signed Oil Sketch.

Winner receives a signed oil on canvas (laid on board) sketch by well listed American Hudson River School artist George Inness (1825-1894). The painting is signed in the lower left corner, seen magnified in picture 4. The signature is faint, but completely legible. The piece is housed in a heavy dark wood frame with contemporary hardware. The piece is wonderfully executed, and a great preliminary sketch for one of his larger paintings. The painting was examined by Thomas Colville at Thomas Colville Fine Arts for authentication and was given a seal of approval. We can include correspondence in regards to the authentication. We are working on getting the painting included in the next catalogue raisonne by Michael Quick, depending on the sales price. When the painting was examined, it was found that there is some restoration (in-painting) in the foreground. We did not notice the in-painting on our first visual inspection so we can assure you it was an old restoration done by an expert. In addition to the in-painting, there is some light wear around the edges, with one of the corners of the board having some actual loss. The edge wear is mostly hidden by the frame. The heavy dark wood frame is in very good condition with no major damage to mention. It does show signs of wear though including some nicks, scrapes, etc. This piece is an absolute gem, and in our opinion, ready for hanging as-is. We personally don't think it would make sense to get the painting further restored, nor did the expert, but that would be up to the new owner. The frame measures roughly 28.5" x 20.5", with the image measuring roughly 23.5" x 16", making this a fairly large sketch. Below is some information about the artist, who needs no introduction, with auction records including a $1,945,000 sale in 2008.  This is a rare opportunity to own an original piece by one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century that has already been examined and deemed authentic.  Please feel free to ask us any questions you may have prior to bidding or making an offer. Thank you for checking out our listing. 

George Inness (1825-1894) was a prominent American  landscape painter  and georgist  activist.

One of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced, in turn, by the Old Masters , the Hudson River school , the Barbizon school , and, finally, the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg , whose spiritualism found vivid expression in the work of Inness's maturity (1879-1894).

Although Inness’s style evolved through distinct stages over a prolific career that spanned more than forty years and 1,000 paintings, his works consistently earned acclaim for their powerful, coordinated efforts to elicit depth of mood, atmosphere, and emotion. Neither pure realist  nor impressionist , Inness was a transitional figure who intended for his works to combine both the earthly and the ethereal in order to capture the complete essence of a locale. A master of light, color, and shadow, he became noted for creating highly ordered and complex scenes that often juxtaposed hazy or blurred elements with sharp and refined details to evoke an interweaving of both the physical and the spiritual nature of experience. In Inness’s words, he attempted through his art to demonstrate the "reality of the unseen” and to connect the "visible upon the invisible."

Within his own lifetime, art critics hailed Inness as one of America's greatest artists. Often called "the father of American landscape painting," Inness is best known for his mature works that not only exemplified the Tonalist  movement but also displayed an original and uniquely American style.

George Inness was born in Newburgh, New York . He was the fifth of thirteen children born to John William Inness, a farmer, and his wife, Clarissa Baldwin. His family moved to Newark, New Jersey  when he was about five years of age. In 1839 he studied for several months with an itinerant painter, John Jesse Barker. In his teens, Inness worked as a map engraver in New York City. During this time he attracted the attention of French landscape painter Régis François Gignoux , with whom he subsequently studied. Throughout the mid-1840s he also attended classes at the National Academy of Design , and studied the work of Hudson River School artists Thomas Cole  and Asher Durand ; "If," Inness later recalled thinking, "these two can be combined, I will try." He debuted his work at the National Academy in 1844.

Inness opened his first studio in New York in 1848. In 1849, he married Delia Miller, who died a few months later. The next year he married Elizabeth Abigail Hart, with whom he would have six children.

In 1851 a patron named Ogden Haggerty sponsored Inness' first trip to Europe to paint and study. Inness spent fifteen months in Rome , where he studied landscapes by Claude Lorrain  and Nicolas Poussin . He also rented a studio there above that of painter William Page , who likely introduced the artist to Swedenborgianism . In 1853 he was elected into the National Academy of Design  as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1868.

During trips to Paris in the early 1850s, Inness came under the influence of artists working in the Barbizon school  of France . Barbizon  landscapes  were noted for their looser brushwork, darker palette, and emphasis on mood. Inness quickly became the leading American exponent of Barbizon-style painting, which he developed into a highly personal style. In 1854 his son George Inness, Jr. , who also became a landscape painter of note, was born in Paris.

In the mid-1850s, Inness was commissioned by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad  to create paintings which documented the progress of DLWRR's growth in early Industrial America. The Lackawanna Valley, painted ca. 1855, represents the railroad's first roundhouse at Scranton , Pennsylvania , and integrates technology and wilderness within an observed landscape; in time, not only would Inness shun the industrial presence in favor of bucolic or agrarian subjects, but he would produce much of his mature work in the studio, drawing on his visual memory to produce scenes that were often inspired by specific places, yet increasingly concerned with formal considerations.

Inness moved from New York City to Medfield, Massachusetts  in 1860, where he converted a barn into a studio . In 1862-63, he was an art teacher to Charles Dormon Robinson . He then to Eagleswood, New Jersey  in 1864. He returned to Europe in the spring of 1870, living in Rome and touring Tivoli , Lake Albano , and Venice .In 1878, he returned to New York, taking a studio in the New York University Building. The same year, he also participated in the Universal Exposition  in Paris, and published art criticism in the New York Evening Post  and Harper's New Monthly Magazine .

His work of the 1860s and 1870s often tended toward the panoramic and picturesque, topped by cloud-laden and threatening skies, and included views of his native country (Autumn Oaks, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art ; Catskill Mountains, 1870, Art Institute of Chicago ), as well as scenes inspired by numerous travels overseas, especially to Italy and France (The Monk, 1873, Addison Gallery of American Art ; Etretat, 1875, Wadsworth Atheneum ). In terms of composition, precision of drawing, and the emotive use of color, these paintings placed Inness among the best and most successful landscape painters in America.

Eventually Inness' art evidenced the influence of the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg. Of particular interest to Inness was the notion that everything in nature had a correspondential relationship with something spiritual and so received an "influx" from God in order to continually exist. Another influence upon Inness' thinking was William James , also an adherent to Swedenborgianism. In particular, Inness was inspired by James' idea of consciousness as a "stream of thought", as well as his ideas concerning how mystical experience shapes one's perspective toward nature.

Inness was the subject of a major retrospective in 1884, organized by the American Art Association , which brought him acclaim in the United States. He earned international fame when he received a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition .

After Inness settled in Montclair, New Jersey  in 1885, and particularly in the last decade of his life, this mystical component manifested in his art through a more abstracted handling of shapes, softened edges, and saturated color (October, 1886, Los Angeles County Museum of Art ), a profound and dramatic juxtaposition of sky and earth (Early Autumn, Montclair, 1888, Montclair Art Museum ), an emphasis on the intimate landscape view (Sunset in the Woods, 1891, Corcoran Gallery of Art ), and an increasingly personal, spontaneous, and often violent handling of paint. It is this last quality in particular which distinguishes Inness from those painters of like sympathies who are characterized as Luminists .

In a published interview, Inness maintained that "The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual nature." His abiding interest in spiritual and emotional considerations did not preclude Inness from undertaking a scientific study of color, nor a mathematical, structural approach to composition: "The poetic quality is not obtained by eschewing any truths of fact or of Nature...Poetry is the vision of reality."

Inness died in 1894 at Bridge of Allan  in Scotland. According to his son, he was viewing the sunset, when he threw up his hands into the air and exclaimed, "My God! Oh, how beautiful!", fell to the ground, and died minutes later. A public funeral for Inness was held at the National Academy of Design, and a memorial exhibition was conducted at the Fine Arts Building in New York City.

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  • Condition: Good overall condition. There is some in-painting in the foreground that was noticed when the painting was examined by the expert. In addition there is some light wear around the edges that are mostly covered by the frame. There is one corner that has a little loss to the board, that is covered by the frame in the photos, but was noticed when it was examined. In our opinion the painting can be hanged as-is.
  • Size: Medium (up to 36in.)
  • Region of Origin: US
  • Artist: George Inness
  • Style: Realism
  • Listed By: Dealer or Reseller
  • Painting Surface: Canvas Laid To Board
  • Quantity Type: Single-Piece Work
  • Medium: Oil
  • Date of Creation: 1800-1899
  • Features: Framed, Signed
  • Subject: Landscape
  • Originality: Original

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