Inness was a much more prolific painter, and his work shows greater variety. He early felt the monotony of the old school, its lack of certain qualities that he found in engravings of European landscapes, and he used to take the prints with him when he went sketching, to try to discover wherein their merit consisted. He studied nature continually, living with it, so that at last he knew its moods and methods by heart. Toward the end of his life he painted much from memory. A landscape painting, perhaps originally sketched from nature, would change under his brush much as the scene itself might under changing lights or varying seasons. The sky filled with clouds, then cleared again, the sunlight spotted the grass or the shadows stretched across it, while the trees turned from the green of summer to the russet of autumn. Naturally work of this later period, much of it left unfinished, is very unequal in merit; but at its best it marks his highest achievement rather than the more carefully planned productions of his middle life. It is more vital and more subtle; but all of Inness’s work except his very earliest reflects the inner nature of the man. It has none of the dignified melancholy of Martin, which has also at times its note of revolt. Inness is never trivial: he keeps his seriousness; but he is never sad. Nature is to him always beautiful, always kindly.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
ACROSS THE FIELDS, BY D. W. TRYON
American Art Annual
D. W. TRYON
With Wyant, Martin, and Inness our early landscape school reached its culmination. Their lives all continued after the end of the Civil War, they even did their best work after it; but they belonged to a school formed in other surroundings. After the war conditions changed. The country was less isolated, intercourse was easier, wealth had increased, and foreign paintings, calculated to show the deficiencies of native work, became increasingly common. The budding artists were no longer willing to pick up their art by their own exertions, aided by occasional counsel from their elders or such inadequate schools as the country then furnished, but departed in ever increasing numbers to the famous schools of Europe.
The difference was not that the earlier painters had ignored Europe. They traveled to see the masterpieces of art and the beauties of nature in foreign countries; but they were on the whole contented with their work and proud of their native school. The younger men absorbed enthusiasm for foreign workmanship, and adopted foreign standards.