George Inness

From mentor Rene Francois Gignoux, GEORGE INNESS knew to paint "Sunshine and clouds" with a classic Dutch 17th-century straight horizon. As one of the greatest 19th-century landscape colorists, he preferred civilized nature to wilderness: "The Lackawanna valley" met nature and train, with the informally simple composition and lighter coloring influences of Barbizon school artists Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, Dupre, Jacque, Rousseau and Troyon. He colored emotions and ideas with the depth and richness earlier seen in Titian and with the arbitrariness later seen in Mark Rothko: popular and widely known "Autumn oaks"; "Lake Nemi," with 2 white birds above accenting the crater depth below; "Off the coast of Cornwall," as one of his rare coast and sea scapes. His style included organizing horizontal and vertical elements: "The brush burners" had the perfect balance later seen in Piet Mondrian; "The monk" showed Japanese-style flatness and occult balance; and architecturally detailed "St Peter's" contrasted darkly solid foreground with lighter distance. He started out faithfully finishing in the studio what he sketched in the field: "Landscape with fishermen" was an early exception, with a made-up water body near the very real Sharp Mountains rocks and trees. He ended making up his own landscapes: "October" was one of the clearest examples of this Synthetic style. Thanks to Harvard's Fogg art museum having "October noon" on a back stariway, Nicolai Cikovsky Jr went on to become recognized for his authoritative knowledge of the painter's work and to organize this book with fellow art curator Michael Quick. Readers might want to go on to James EB Breslin's MARK ROTHKO, Rudolf Herman Fuchs' DUTCH PAINTING, Hans Ludwig C. Jaffe's PIET MONDRIAN, and Filippo Pedrocco's TITIAN.