clip & save - Brief Article

Arts & Activities, Nov, 2000 by Guy Hubbard

The Delaware Water Gap is on the point where the Delaware River cuts through the Appalachian Mountains on its way to the sea. It lies on the borders of New Jersey and Pennsylvania near the town of Stroudsburg, Pa. The famous walking trail, the Appalachian Trail (from Georgia to Maine), also crosses the river at this point.

The place continues to be famous, although today it is now ringed by major highways. If students have been there they are more likely to have seen barges, tractors and modern buildings. The quiet countryside of 150 years ago, disturbed only by a puffing steam engine, has long gone.

George Inness chose scenes to paint in part because they appealed to him and because he had to sell paintings to earn a living. His paintings reflect his awe of nature, depicting occasions at specific places that possessed drama and atmosphere. He enjoyed painting stormy conditions, especially the threatening atmosphere caused by the dark clouds of approaching storms. Sometimes his storm clouds are seen rolling down the mountainsides. Sometimes they are dark walls advancing on a peaceful scene. He sometimes included lightning or rainbows to add to the natural drama of the scene.

Inness also liked to include the mistiness that occurs as rain showers draw a veil over distant objects. Sometimes he captured the mists that occur when the sunshine is drying out a rain-soaked landscape. Another favorite was when the morning fogginess created mysterious shapes and shadows before the warm sun dried everything out.

Inness also painted the warm, dusty haziness of summer evenings where, once again, details of trees and hills blended together. Inness, in fact, was a painter of summer and fall rather than of the other seasons. He painted very few winter scenes. Most of the works for which he is best remembered are of the countryside near where he lived in New York and New Jersey.

This particular painting was one of the first in George Inness' revised painting style, which he perfected from having studied the work of European artists on his trips overseas. It is an example of the atmospheric haziness that became his well-known style throughout the remainder of his life. Up to this time--he was then in his middle 30s--he had been seen only as a "promising young artist. "It was at this time that the American art public caught up with him, and he emerged from obscurity to enjoy the success he had worked so hard to achieve.

As in earlier paintings of the Delaware Water Gap, the familiar break in the mountains can be seen in this picture, but this time it appears as a hazy silhouette--the consequence of a passing rain shower. Trees and hills blend together to create much simpler shapes than those found in Inness' earlier works. A young herdsman watches as a few cows browse the riverbank while others stand in the water to drink. Several men are poling a raft downriver, while a small ferryboat crosses ahead of it to pick up passengers. The sun lights up the foreground scene as the rain shower drifts away with only a rainbow to mark its passage.

Instead of imitating nature, Inness used his observations as a visual language to express his emotions. Nature was not simply something to be seen and imitated--it had divine meaning. Some art critics even came to believe that his interpretations of nature were a form of poetry.

Inness' method of painting matched his passionate personality. He worked quickly and with great energy--brushing, rubbing, scrubbing and spreading paint on a canvas. As he worked, he continually added and subtracted paint until a picture satisfied him. Yet he was never fully satisfied--he was constantly exploring new ways of expressing himself. He remarked that "I have never completed my art."

This constant searching for better ways of expressing himself led, at Inness' death, to the discovery of 600 paintings in his studio, of which only 240 were finished.