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SUMMER FOLIAGE

George Inness

By ELLIOTT DAINGERFIELD Illustrations from paintings by George Inness

do not know what we should have had if George Inness had written his own biography. Eccentric it certainly would have been, with slight attention paid to those externals which are of interest to the general reader; for he was the most impersonal of men. He was never interested in himself as a man, though he was interested in the artistic man. He believed in himself as an artist very profoundly, and his mind, which was most alert, was ever delving into or solving problems connected with what he called "the principles of painting." Of this sort of thing we should have had a great deal, more, indeed, than any of us could have understood, because he was not always coherent. To himself his reasoning was very clear; indeed, he valued the results of these mental debates greatly, many times writing them down. What has become of these writings I do not know, but

no doubt they were written in such a vagrant, disjointed way that they could not be pieced together by another.

In speech his vocabulary was rapid, extensive, extreme, not always well chosen as to meaning; but, when supplied with gesture and expression, words took on new meanings, and for the time were understandable. If reported verbatim, they would have failed of meaning. Just how they would have appeared in any biography I do not know, for cold type is ever a cruel critic.

He once expounded to me what he called "the ascent of a fleck of soot to the pure diamond by the vortexical progress," and proved, to himself at least, divinity. Frankly, I could not follow either the thought or the the reasoning, though it seemed intensely interesting, and I begged him to write it down. He said that he had spent the night doing so, but I have never

heard of the writing, and inquiry did not reveal it. During the delivery of this exegesis his declamation was flaming, very fierce and assured. His eyes sparkled, his mane-like hair was tossed about, and his hands were as vigorously in motion as possible, the whole manner commanding attention; but once completed, once fully told, the fever passed, and he was silent and very quiet. After such struggles he returned to his painting with new spirit and new insight, and always one could see the growth in power in the work. Who shall say what he saw within himself, what new realms or wide horizons were opened to his vision?

He was a man of great energy, but with no great amount of strength other wise, and always he drove himself to the utmost. His best work was ever accomplished at white heat and under great emotion. Watching him closely, I many times saw him work with cold calculation, but without exception these pictures endured only for a time, and were repainted when the fever was upon him.

It was this consuming energy which burned up his vitality and brought his end. There was no other reason, no disease or insistent illness sapping away his life, but rather a burning up. Many canvases which have come down to us in their beauty and glowing glory cost him days of exquisite agony, so that we may truly say of them that they were painted with heart's blood.

In his mind there was no particle of that quality which we have come to know as modern art. His own was cast in those channels the canons of which have been written in all ages by those great men whose genius has made their work endure. He knew that fashion in art is a theory and a vain bubble, of no account to those who blow it or those who think its colors of worth. During his working days there were as many isms abroad as there are to-day, but he would have none of them, realizing keenly, as most thoughtful men do, that their lure is rather to the man who has no power of thought, of invention, within himself; that it is not,

and, in its own nature, cannot be born of sincerity. Here alone is the rock upon which the true artist ever takes his stand.

Our study of the great work of George Inness easily discovers its sincerity. It matters not if we are looking at the careful studies of early days or the more synthetic canvases of the last years, we read in them all knowledge. How like the name of a god the word comes in the midst of work based on crudity! To Inness it was an essential thing, and always behind the consciousness of knowledge was nature.

In those works which express the man's message there is never a servile copying of place or thing; yet both are in place, both fully understood, and the beauty of the nature he wishes us to see is fully revealed-revealed, too, in George Inness's way. And that again. is one of the beauties of great landscape art,—any art, for that matter, which claims to be fine art,-it is always plus the man.

There is little gain for art in the exquisite copying of things. Many have tried it, many have spent long hours and days in servile reproduction, and begotten in the end an emptiness, a thing which has the same relation to art that an inanimate has to an animate creature; but in the study which produces understanding, in the loving observation which teaches, in the absorption of idea-in such ways men acquire the knowledge which gives them expression, which permits them, within the silence of four blank walls, to see visions and to give gifts to men. It is through such works that we know and love the great men, and through such works that they uplift humanity and better civilization. They lift for us a curtain, and eyes which have been dull before are illumined. A great work, indeed!

It is because of this great inner vision that George Inness must take rank among the greatest landscape-painters, almost, we might say, himself the greatest of all, but for that American objection to the claims of any man in any walk of life to being acclaimed greatest.

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Yet a measure of his work is being taken by the passing years, and we begin to see what a genius has dwelt among us. No matter the carping voice of critic, no matter the contempt of little painters of painted things, this was his towering gift to us this power to present the essence of things. Consider, the greatest of his pictures were painted out of what people fondly call his imagination, his memory -painted within the four walls of a room, away from and without reference to any particular nature; for he himself was nature. And it is not alone the beauty of a great elm against a sunlit sky, it is not merely the chase of storm-driven clouds, it is not only the crash and thunder of mighty seas against the rockribbed shores of a continent, not morning, noon, or night; not one, but all were his, and all are George Inness.

His versatility was enormous; the glow of it wrapped about him like a flame. His eyes burned like fire when in coal and redhot; he looked through the blank canvas,

through the besmeared paint, through the days and hours of work, to that vision which was within himself, and that alone was his goal, and no likeness of any place or thing tempted him aside. The impetuosity of it as he approached the goal was like a storm, and to any but an understanding eye the process was as devastating as a storm; but high above the trammels of technic, of form, of color, of pigment, his soul, eagle-like, soared to its aerie, and the vision, wide of horizon, perfect in all its parts, was complete. Men do not paint so who have not the immortal spark. Tiresome drones who do their little and delude themselves-how easily are they scorched in such a fire! Fire it was, but not always alight. No man had deeper moods of despondency, no man suffered more deeply under baffled aims, no man more ruthlessly destroyed in order to make new, than this painter; but like a grim warrior, against whose striving the battle has gone badly, he would say, "I'll do it to-morrow." The splendor of this

courage never left him. To the last he knew and believed in his own gift, and 'seldom did it fail him. Time alone was needed, and the beautiful thing was sure of birth.

There is no doubt that he died when his powers were at their full; he would not have been content to linger if they had waned, and he would have been keenly aware of it. Elsewhere I have tried to show that there was change: the early, exact, careful analysis; the middle, broader, fuller, more colored period; and the latest, synthetic style, which includes. so many of his beautiful works. ways the power was there.

But al

It is perhaps interesting to note the difference in the artist who works in the way that I have here tried to indicate and in that more exact copyist, who, strong only in his eyes, and depending always upon them, grows blind and weak at the last. His is never the glory of departing in flame, like some grand old viking, who seeks his rest in the burning. hour of inspiration.

A painter critic has spoken of Mr. Inness's technic as being "empirical." By technic he refers to the method of using

his pigment to produce result. Such an opinion is largely the voice of the schoolman, of one who in the schools was taught the precise method of mixing tints and conveying them to the canvas, each tint to represent a certain plane or value in the form. One does not want to quarrel with the schools, for their place and usefulness is clear, but it is quite possible to say that the student who stops with what he gains in a school does not go far. If he does not pursue, investigate, and experiment, he will never discover, and discovery is essential to any personal, technical expression; and such development, when successful, is apt to reveal not only the painter, but the artist. Also, one must be able to control this result of experiment until it becomes a servant, willing, plastic, ready at all times to the guiding will. This was colossally so with George Inness, and his technical power was so superior to what the intellectual schoolmen accomplish that his work burns with the fire of genius and inspiration. He himself believed that his method was intensely scientific. Certainly the proof lies in his work. If there were times when it seemed to fail him, times when change

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and repainting were necessary, it may not rest a charge against the clarity of his method. Much goes into the use of pigment other than brush-work. An overstrained nervous system, a stomach out of order, a voice which persists, will untune the finer forces and render a day's work wholly abortive; the humming of a fly or bee has robbed many a sensitive artist of his day's result.

Inness knew truths of color that I have never known any one else even to glimpse. He knew great principles of color application which lesser men could not grasp. He had no interest in details of color or in small, attenuated tints. His was the power of mass, the authority of tone upon tone, the concentration of a tone in its base color, which lured you into consciousness of its presence. In another it would have been inconceivably dull and stagnant. For these reasons and more I believe he not only had a masterly technic, but I believe it more nearly equaled the strength and understanding of the great masters than any of our men have attained. He is certainly not like any one of the great galaxy; you may find kinship of energy

and dynamic force in Tintoretto more than another. He was fond of thinking it was Titian he most resembled, and the spiritist mediums, finding this out, were forever telling him that Titian stood at his elbow. elbow. The impetuosity of Tintoretto was fully reflected in Inness : his swiftness in composition, his ease of expression with the brush in great masses without previous outlines reflects, also, some of the great Italian's characteristics, and each had the capacity for holding the wild, splendid force in leash until great tenderness was achieved. To say, then, that his technic was anything but suitable is to misstate, and to misunderstand the man.

Among the younger painters of the day it is a habit to speak slightingly of Mr. Inness and his method of work. They say his technic was fumbling, uncertain, glazy, and lacking in directness; that he could not paint frankly or directly; that his effects were rather matters of chance than anything else. Oh, the wisdom of youth

youth whose smallest utterance is axiomatic! Have they ever seriously looked upon the "Gray, Lowery Day," a canvas painted rapidly, with no hint of glaze or

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