George Inness and the Visionary Landscape - Hardcover

Bell, Adrienne Baxter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807600091 ISBN 13: 9780807600092

Publisher: George Braziller Inc., 2015

Synopsis

The essential book on the innovative American landscape painter, with a new preface by the author. A “rare, valuable and luminously illustrated monograph.” (Booklist)

This eloquent examination of Inness' most important paintings illuminates the artist’s philosophical and religious preoccupations. It provides an overview of his life and situates Inness within the contexts of key issues in American history, such as the Hudson River School, Transcendentalism, Swedenborgianism, and the work of William James. It explains for the first time how Inness treated landscape painting as a form of philosophical inquiry that could communicate his holistic belief in the unity of nature and spirit. “Bell’s handsomely illustrated, eloquently written, and well-documented text considerably expands previous scholarship. ..[A] first-rate study. Highly recommended.” (Choice) 

40 full color illustrations and 19 black and white illustrations

About this title

About the Author:

Adrienne Baxter Bell, Ph.D., is the author of George Inness: Painting Philosophy and the editor of George Inness: Writings and Reflections on Art and Philosophy (Braziller, 2006). She served as Guest Curator for the exhibition George Inness and the Visionary Landscape (2003-04) and is an Associate Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College, New York.

From Booklist:

Inspired landscape painter George Inness (1825-94) was born in New York State's beautiful Hudson Valley and could easily have been part of the world-renowned Hudson River School. Instead, as Bell argues so persuasively in this rare, invaluable, and luminously illustrated monograph, Inness was far more concerned with metaphysics than with representational depictions of nature. Sojourns in Europe brought him into sympathy with the "emotionalism and painterly practices of the Barbizon School," Bell writes, but the most crucial influence on his later work was his immersion in the writings of Swedenborg, which inspired him to paint landscapes emblematic of the Swedenborgian vision of "spiritual influx," that is, the infusion of divinity into nature. Psychologist and philosopher William James also shaped Inness' meditative aesthetics with his vision of consciousness as a "stream of thought" and his observation of how mystical experiences "soften nature's outlines and open out the strangest possibilities and perspectives." The latter provides a perfect description for Inness' transcendent landscapes--gorgeous and radiant scenes that embody life's interconnectivity, mystery, timeless beauty, and untarnished hope. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: George Braziller Inc.
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0807600091
• ISBN 13: 9780807600092
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 174