“When almost twenty I had a month with Regis Gignoux, my health not permitting me to take advantage of study at the Academy in the evening, and this is all the instruction I ever had from any artist.”
He was virtually self-taught as a youth, but his later work was developed and somewhat influenced by the study of other painters at home and abroad. At first he studied Cole and Durand, and his pictures were rather panoramic in theme and hard in drawing. He worked much over detail, and at this early time must have been acquired a knowledge of form and a store of visual memories which were to serve him thereafter. The brittle landscapes of Inness’s youth are seldom seen to-day. What became of them no one knows. He sold them for any sum that would temporarily keep the wolf from the door, and, passing into the hands of unappreciative people, they have perhaps perished. I never heard him so much as mention his very early work, though in his letter to Ripley Hitchcock he speaks of some of his studies under Gignoux as being “very elaborate.”
In 1850 he was married, and through the assistance of one of his patrons, Mr. Ogden Haggerty, he went to Italy and spent fifteen months there, returning through Paris, seeing the Salon, and the work of Rousseau for the first time.
“Rousseau was just beginning to make a noise. A great many people were grouped about a little picture of his which seemed to me metallic. Our traditions were English; and French art, particularly in landscape, had made but little impression upon us.”
Just when he made this statement is not apparent, but certainly it was not his final estimate of Rousseau and French landscape. He was later on much influenced by Corot, Rousseau, and Daubigny; but with his first long stay in Europe, chiefly near Rome, it was to be expected that the romance and glamour of the place with such classical painters as Salvator, Claude, and Poussin would sway him.
The second period of his development, dating from about 1853 to 1875, is full of diverse influences. Succeeding trips to Europe and repeated studies of European art rather disturbed his preconceived opinions, and made him doubtful. At one time he would work in one vein; at another time he would reverse himself and go back to his early affinities. It was a period of struggle not only with his art but with the more purely material affair of gaining a livelihood. He lived during this time for four years at Medfield, Massachusetts, then at Eagleswood, New Jersey; and in both places painted some notable canvases, though they were not popular with the buying public.
The “Peace and Plenty,” now at the Metropolitan Museum, painted in 1865, is a huge affair, and the wonder is that it was not a huge failure. It is a little too diversified in the lights, and a bit spotty, perhaps, but it is rather broadly handled with a flat brush, and, all told, a remarkable canvas for the time. It represents him under Italian inspiration. The “Evening at Medfield,” also in the Metropolitan, painted in 1875, suggests French influence, perhaps Daubigny. It is broader, freer, thinner in handling, simpler in masses, and has more unity. None of the pictures at this period are counted his best output, but they are not the less works of decided merit.
It was after four continuous years in Europe (1871-1875) that Inness came into a third style of work (the “Evening at Medfield” indicates it), quite his own, quite American, and quite splendid. It was during this stay abroad that he seemed finally to find himself. His brush broadened, his light grew more subtle, his color became richer and fuller. Corot had taught him how to sacrifice detail to the mass, Rousseau had improved his use of the tree, Daubigny gave him many hints about atmosphere; from Decamps he learned how to drive a light with darks, and Delacroix opened to him a gamut of deep, rich color. He was now in position to graft the French tradition of landscape upon the American stock. And this he did, but in his own manner and with many lapses, even failures, by the way.
All through this third period, and for that matter up to his death, Inness was experimenting with landscape. Every canvas was a new adventure in color, light, and air. In his last period he seemed to see landscape in related masses of color rather than in linear extensions; and so he painted it holding the color patches together with air and illuminating the whole mass by a half-mysterious light. It was not attenuated color—mauves, pinks, and sad grays—but strong reds, blues, greens, and yellows keyed up oftentimes to a high pitch and fire-hued by sunlight. Nor were they put on the canvas in little dots and dabs, but rather shown in large masses brought together for massed effect and made resonant by contrast.
