“Sunrise”
A magical morning on canvas.
“Sunrise” is a gorgeous oil on canvas painting by the American landscape artist, George Inness, from 1887. Inness is commonly known as the ‘Father of American landscape painting’. He is credited with helping to create a uniquely American landscape style, masterfully combining the Hudson River School with the Barbizon school of art.
In this piece, painted with a Tonalism color palette, Inness seamlessly paints the peacefulness of the rural world hand in hand with the industrial world. Trees and a lone figure are seen in the foreground, with livestock in the midground, and two smokestacks billowing smoke in the background.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Inness became deeply influenced by Swedenborgianism. He followed their spiritual view that there was beauty in both rural as well as industrial labor. In this piece, Inness competently marries the two worlds in one beautiful vision.
This is one of several paintings that Inness made of the same subject and same year. Another “Sunrise” is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art in Brooklyn, New York, the United States. The differences are only with the range and tone of colors in the palette.
“Sunrise” is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, in the United States.
For more on George Inness, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
