INNESS, George (Newburgh, 1825 – Bridge of Allan, 1894)
Born in 1825, near Newburgh, New York, George Inness spent the major part of his youth in Newark, New Jersey. Largely self-taught, around 1841 he studied briefly in Newark with an itinerant artist. In 1843, after two years as apprentice engraver in a New York map-making firm, he studied with the French émigré Régis F. Gignoux and attended antique class at the National Academy of Design. The following year he began to exhibit at the National Academy of Design (he was elected Associate in 1853 and Academician in 1868). In 1851 he left for Europe and was in Italy for nearly 15 months. At the end of 1853–1854, he visited France where the emotionally expressive landscapes of the Barbizon painters had a decisive influence on his art. Between 1854 and 1859 he returned to New York where his paintings were rejected by the critics. In 1860 he moved to Medfield, Massachusetts, and began to establish his reputation. Between 1864 and 1867 he lived in Eagleswood, New, Jersey, where he was introduced by the artist William Page to the teachings of the Swedish scientist-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.
Between 1870 and 1875 he travelled, again, extensively in Europe, primarily to Rome, through a commercial arrangement with some Boston dealers, eager to satisfy the demand for Italian scenes. In 1875 he returned to Boston. In 1878 he bought an estate in Montclair (NJ), and during the same year published series of interviews on art and aesthetics and was supported by the important collector Thomas B. Clarke. The retrospective exhibition held in New York in 1884, launched a decade of critical pre-eminence. In 1894, after several years of extensive travel in USA, he made his final trip to Europe and died on 3 August 1894 at Bridge of Allan, Scotland. On 23 August a public funeral was held at the National Academy of Design in New York.
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