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拍品专文
George Inness distinguished himself among the Hudson River School painters by pursuing a more modern aesthetic of landscape painting. Where other artists of the 1850s chose to render more purely pastoral views, Inness embraced the new. In his Delaware Water Gap of 1857, the artist not only literally includes the modern technology of the locomotive train within his rural panorama, but he also transcends the precedents of the American landscape tradition through his innovatively radiant color palette and play with compositional design. The first iteration of the artist’s favorite subject along the border of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Delaware Water Gap marks the beginning of one of the greatest series of Inness’ career, with other examples in institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and National Gallery of Art, London.
The present work was likely commissioned by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company to advertise the views along their new rail line. Two years earlier, Inness had painted for the company The Lackawanna Valley (The First Roundhouse of the D.L & W.R.R. at Scranton), which places the train fully at the center of the composition. That work—in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and long recognized as one of Inness’s most famous paintings—represents, as John Wilmerding notes, “one of the central images of the mid-nineteenth century’s play of forces between the engines of industry and the Edenic purity of nature.” (American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, New York, 1980, p. 98) The painting set a standard for how industrialization does not necessarily signal the end of the picturesque; instead, Inness uses the train as a unifying element connecting the disparate parts of the landscape and allowing the viewer a path to follow alongside him through the countryside.
The present work, as well as another 1857 painting entitled Delaware Water Gap (Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey), were likely part of the same railroad commission. Painted in the same scale and format as The Lackawanna Valley, the two canvases of the Delaware River Gap also feature the train but place its tracks more subtly within the landscape, drawing attention to the magnificent views to be seen along its route. The Montclair picture, which was reproduced as a Currier & Ives lithograph, shows the view from the New Jersey side of the landmark. In the present version, Inness captures the vantage from the Pennsylvania side of the Gap, with Mount Minsi in the distance on the near side and Mount Tammany on the opposite New Jersey side. In each case, Inness evokes a peaceful harmony in the interplay between innovation and tradition that is decidedly forward-thinking for the mid-nineteenth century.
Just as his subject matter marries traditional rural life with contemporary progress, so too does Inness combine the sensibility of Hudson River School tradition with new influences to create a style all his own. Lauretta Dimmick describes, “The painting's broad, horizontal format, with its panoramic view of a river valley, is closely related to the wide, scenic transcriptions of nature done by [Thomas] Cole and by Cole's pupil, [Frederic] Church. There are certain affinities between this painting and Cole's Oxbow, including the point of view and the high-keyed palette. With his precise layout of cultivated fields and sprinkling of homesteads, Inness seems to have made a great effort to portray accurately the topography of the scene.” (American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, New York, 1987, p. 233)
Yet, unlike Cole and Church, Inness creates a painting with a distinctly “blond palette,” as Michael Quick describes, where “the color is actually quite limited.” (George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2007, p. 131) The bright hues, without dramatic contrast and directly applied without scumbling or layering, create a bold depiction that in some ways relates more closely to the Luminists, or even the Impressionists, than the Hudson River School. Dimmick details, “Perhaps the most arresting quality of the work is Inness's palette, which is composed primarily of pastel blues and greens, touched with yellow and pink. There are no saturated colors in the painting; white is used in nearly every pigment…Inness has gone to an extreme, using colors even lighter than those of Barbizon paintings and almost foreshadowing those of the French Impressionists. The pervading lightness and brightness of Delaware Water Gap (though not its diffused treatment) relate it to the Luminist paintings of John Kensett and Martin Johnson Heade.” (American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, p. 234)
Inness would return to the Delaware Water Gap as a subject many times over the following decades until as late as 1891. His unique take on the site, bridging old and new ways of life and art, “brought a large vision and a poetic insight to the interpretation of the casual, familiar scenes, surprising beauty where others had found only suburban triviality.” As an early twentieth-century reviewer wrote, with Inness’ paintings of the Delaware Water Gap, “The…hills of New Jersey and...the undiscovered Delaware valley took their place in our art with the Grand Cañon and Yosemite Valley.” (as quoted in American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, p. 234)
The present work was likely commissioned by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company to advertise the views along their new rail line. Two years earlier, Inness had painted for the company The Lackawanna Valley (The First Roundhouse of the D.L & W.R.R. at Scranton), which places the train fully at the center of the composition. That work—in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and long recognized as one of Inness’s most famous paintings—represents, as John Wilmerding notes, “one of the central images of the mid-nineteenth century’s play of forces between the engines of industry and the Edenic purity of nature.” (American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, New York, 1980, p. 98) The painting set a standard for how industrialization does not necessarily signal the end of the picturesque; instead, Inness uses the train as a unifying element connecting the disparate parts of the landscape and allowing the viewer a path to follow alongside him through the countryside.
The present work, as well as another 1857 painting entitled Delaware Water Gap (Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey), were likely part of the same railroad commission. Painted in the same scale and format as The Lackawanna Valley, the two canvases of the Delaware River Gap also feature the train but place its tracks more subtly within the landscape, drawing attention to the magnificent views to be seen along its route. The Montclair picture, which was reproduced as a Currier & Ives lithograph, shows the view from the New Jersey side of the landmark. In the present version, Inness captures the vantage from the Pennsylvania side of the Gap, with Mount Minsi in the distance on the near side and Mount Tammany on the opposite New Jersey side. In each case, Inness evokes a peaceful harmony in the interplay between innovation and tradition that is decidedly forward-thinking for the mid-nineteenth century.
Just as his subject matter marries traditional rural life with contemporary progress, so too does Inness combine the sensibility of Hudson River School tradition with new influences to create a style all his own. Lauretta Dimmick describes, “The painting's broad, horizontal format, with its panoramic view of a river valley, is closely related to the wide, scenic transcriptions of nature done by [Thomas] Cole and by Cole's pupil, [Frederic] Church. There are certain affinities between this painting and Cole's Oxbow, including the point of view and the high-keyed palette. With his precise layout of cultivated fields and sprinkling of homesteads, Inness seems to have made a great effort to portray accurately the topography of the scene.” (American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, New York, 1987, p. 233)
Yet, unlike Cole and Church, Inness creates a painting with a distinctly “blond palette,” as Michael Quick describes, where “the color is actually quite limited.” (George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2007, p. 131) The bright hues, without dramatic contrast and directly applied without scumbling or layering, create a bold depiction that in some ways relates more closely to the Luminists, or even the Impressionists, than the Hudson River School. Dimmick details, “Perhaps the most arresting quality of the work is Inness's palette, which is composed primarily of pastel blues and greens, touched with yellow and pink. There are no saturated colors in the painting; white is used in nearly every pigment…Inness has gone to an extreme, using colors even lighter than those of Barbizon paintings and almost foreshadowing those of the French Impressionists. The pervading lightness and brightness of Delaware Water Gap (though not its diffused treatment) relate it to the Luminist paintings of John Kensett and Martin Johnson Heade.” (American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, p. 234)
Inness would return to the Delaware Water Gap as a subject many times over the following decades until as late as 1891. His unique take on the site, bridging old and new ways of life and art, “brought a large vision and a poetic insight to the interpretation of the casual, familiar scenes, surprising beauty where others had found only suburban triviality.” As an early twentieth-century reviewer wrote, with Inness’ paintings of the Delaware Water Gap, “The…hills of New Jersey and...the undiscovered Delaware valley took their place in our art with the Grand Cañon and Yosemite Valley.” (as quoted in American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, p. 234)