Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002

As Americans gradually became interested in painting and sculpture New Jersey produced a number of artists whose work shows the prevalent influences of the first half of the last century. Typical of this group was Charles Parsons (1821-1910), a water-colorist and engraver for Currier and Ives. During this period William Dunlap of Perth Amboy, an unsuccessful historical painter, published A History o f the Rise and Progress o f the Arts o f Design in the United States, which proved so valuable that he has been called "the American Vasari."

Asher B. Durand of South Orange throughout his long life from 1796 to 1886 earned the titles of "the Nation's most distinguished engraver and "the father of American landscape painting." After a brilliant start at engraving copies of portraits, he turned, in 1834 to landscape painting. The microscopic eye of the engraver working directly from nature fostered a passion for nicety of expression. This trend characterized his work and set the tone of the Hudson River school, which he helped to found. The outstanding figure of the middle years of the last century was George Inness (1825-1894), who spent many years of his life in Montclair and some fime in Perth Amboy. At first he was more or less in sympathy with the tradition of the Hudson River school and practiced a method akin to Durand's. But his art, as developed here and abroad, steadily broadened and deepened, becoming especially noteworthy for the richness of color. Under the influence of Corot he began to sacrifice detail to mass and to abandon the panoramic treatment in favor of accented composition.

Inness advanced the trend in landscape painting from the purely analytic form of Durand and his followers to a genuinely romantic stage. He sought to emphasize quality and force of emotion rather than scenic fidelity. Nature in all seasons and all aspects of the sky attracted him in his quest for harmony of form and mystical feeling. In his later years he passed into a genuinely mystical period, favoring canvases of eerie fogs and strange lights instead of the earlier landscape and pastoral compositions.

Inness produced many masterpieces which rank him with the leaders of the Barbizon school; yet he remained essentially individual. In addition to his celebrated views of the Delaware Water Gap, he painted much of the New Jersey scene, particularly around Montclair. Six representative paintings now hang in the Montclair Art Museum. Contemporary critics are virtually agreed that Inness is one of the foremost American landscape painters.

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