About Inness, And Man And Nature

George Inness was a slow bloomer. While he had little formal training, on trips to France and Italy he studied the old masters and the contemporary Barbizon painters, with their emphasis on realism and soft tonalities. But his greatest work came in the last decade or so of his life, and when he died he was acknowledged as this country’s greatest landscape painter, both influential and controversial. These late visionary paintings were what captivated Katherine and Frank Martucci when they first saw them 20 years ago. The Martuccis, who now live in Columbia County, NY, collected a small group of exquisite late-Inness works, funded an Inness Gallery at the art museum of Montclair, NJ, where the artist lived that last, crucial decade, and even underwrote an comprehensive Inness catalogue. In June the Clark Art Institute announced that the Martuccis had given the museum the most significant gift of American paintings in its history. The luminous heart of the donation, eight late Inness paintings, along with two works already owned by the institute, are now splendidly hanging in a wonderful little show that invites quiet contemplation in a quiet gallery. Of course Inness was never bombastic nor imperial in his representation of nature, unlike the great Hudson River School artists who created awesome landscapes, part of a gorgeous but often terrifying natural world that overwhelmed humanity with grandeur. Influenced by the philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg, Inness wanted to imbue his pictures with the spiritual essence of nature, with the principal of harmony, with the indivisibility of man and nature. In his last years, Inness became increasingly radical, even visionary. While always painterly, he pushed boundaries of color and of composition. These paintings seem traditionally composed until you notice how vague the forms can be. Brushwork is light yet exacting; colors are often wiped and blurred. The road to Impressionism is clear. Then there is the artist’s way with light. In “Sunrise in the Woods,” a ray of sunlight seems to shimmer and radiate in the midst of a dark, dense forest. It almost hurts your eye with its intensity. “Autumn in Montclair,” explodes in intense oranges, later wiped into near abstraction. The picture might have come from Monet’s last, great burst of unexpectedly abstract painting. “Scene at Durham, an Idyll,” is layered with dark rocks and trees in the foreground against an orange, late afternoon sky that seems to fade before your eyes. Inness never bursts into your mind the way most great painters do. Yet his range, his brushwork, his unerring sense of light are all experimental and inventive; his best work still surprises. If he does not so much fit into any school of painting, he securely occupies one entirely his own. George Inness, Gifts From Frank and Katherine Martucci, continues at the Clark Art Institute through Sept. 8. The museum is at 225 South St. in Williamstown, MA. The galleries are open every day, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., until September, when they are closed on Mondays. Call 413-458-2303 or go to www.clarkart.edu.