John O'Brien Inman

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1998 by Carolyn B. Wilkinson

In 1866 Inman left the United States for what would be a twelve-year stay in Europe. In his Book of the Artists: American Artist Life..., Henry T. Tuckerman cites a letter in a London journal mentioning Inman's studio in Rome:

Mr. Inman, who has been but a few months at Rome, has found that time long enough for very many representations of Roman life, executed with a rapidity which would seem impossible from a study of the results. Most pleasing to the writer is one christened "Sunny Thoughts, "a sweet child leaning from a window, with serious but happy thought in her deep blue eyes, innocence and cheerfulness in every line of her face, all according well with the bright light which falls over the golden hair and over the vine leaves drooping from the casement above.(17)

Inman's work in Rome included "some admirable groups of Italian peasants."(18) In 1870 an article in Harpers New Monthly Magazine mentioned:

Inman's fine studio had some new designs of flower pieces, and some most valuable studies from the haunts and shrines of St. Francis of Assisi, which he had taken from careful sketches made on the spot, and which were most instructive contributions to Church History as well as specimens of art.(19)

The artist appears to have enjoyed Rome. An American visitor there, Caroline Hyde Butler Laing, the mother-in-law of the artist T. Buchanan Read (1822-1872), recalled visiting Inman's Roman studio and described him as "the jolly Inman.... A handsome, pleasant, merry fellow.... I have met him several times and his abandon to a flow of good spirits just stilts me."(20) In 1872 Inman sent a painting entitled Roman Gate to the National Academy of Design exhibition.(21)

Inman returned to the United States in 1878 and shortly thereafter painted a posthumous portrait of Daisy Davenport (Pl. VIII), who had died at the age of two. Daisy, dressed in her christening dress, holds a rose of Sharon, a symbol of remembrance.

During the ensuing decade Inman painted two of his best-known pictures: Moonlight Skating - Central Park; the Terrace and Lake, of around 1878 (Pl. I) and Bathing Beauties on the Hudson of 1887.(22) The former was made several years after the completion of the terrace by the lake in the park but shortly after Inman's return from Europe.

Sometime during the 1880s Inman returned to England, staying in Yatton, Somerset.(23) In 1888 his name reappeared in the New York City directory, where he was listed as residing at "St. Omer h." However, the search for a Saint Omer Hospital, Home, or Street in the city in the 1880s has proved fruitless.

For a time Inman lived and worked in Saugerties, New York, a small, picturesque town on the banks of the Hudson River about eighty miles north of New York City near the Catskill Mountains. In 1956 a Saugerties resident recalled: "About 65 years ago Inman's son, John O'Brien Inman; came to my native town of Saugerties, New York, where he gave lessons in oil painting and sold pictures."(24) A year later another Saugerties resident wrote: