George Inness, Wood Gatherers: An Autumn Afternoon, 1891; Oil on canvas, 30 x 45 1/8 in. (76.2 x 114.6 cm); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1955.9
In 1890, George Inness visited William Keith at his San Francisco studio. Keith, the dean of West Coast painters, showed him a new landscape. “Blast it open!” Inness shouted, grabbing a paintbrush and replacing Keith’s dark brown tree with a patch of bright sky.
In his own art, Inness (1825–1894) subdued his impetuosity beneath a softer, contemplative style. Along with James McNeill Whistler, Dwight Tryon, and Thomas Dewing, Inness forms a group known as the tonalists. In her 1972 essay The Color of Mood for an exhibition gathering this group for the first time, Wanda Corn defined tonalism as “a style of intimacy and expressiveness, interpreting very specific themes in limited color scales and employing delicate effects of light to create vague, suggestive moods.”
George Inness, Green Landscape, 1886; Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 40 3/8 in. (76.8 x 102.6 cm); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Gift of Frank and Katherine Martucci, 2013.1.5
Through September 8, the Clark Art Institute will show eight late-period Inness works to complement the two they already own. The paintings are part of a gift from the New York collectors Frank and Katherine Martucci that also includes works by Eastman Johnson, Gaston La Touche, Piet Mondrian, and Mosè Bianchi. Martucci, a financier, began