George Inness

George Inness was born near Newburgh, New York in 1825. In 1839, he studied for several months with an itinerant painter, John Jesse Barker before taking a job as a map engraver in New York City. He was a student of the French landscape painter Régis-François Gignoux, and he took classes at the National Academy of Design in mid-1840s. His own development was heavily influenced by the paintings of Thomas Cole and Asher Durand. They provided Inness with an aesthetic and technical model for his own work.

Inness was a follower of the Christian sect of Swedenborgianism. This group believed in “universal harmony,” and felt that salvation is only possible by “doing good works”—working to change the world for the better: he was a supporter and promoter of the nineteenth century reform movements including the abolition of slavery and labor reform.