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Life, Art, and Letters of George Inness

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Life, Art, and Letters of George Inness LIFE, ART AND LETTERS OF GEORGE INNE.5S GEORGE INNESSJr. «*« <.-:..; : vM ( > EX LIBRIS '< WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART 10WEST 8TH STREET-NEW YORK jfn LIFE, ART, AND LETTERS OF GEORGE INNESS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO http://archive.org/details/lifelettersOOinne GEORGE INNBSS (Painted by George Inness, Jr.) LIFE, ART, AND LITTERS OF GEORGE INNESS BY GEORGE INNESS, Jr. ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS AND MANY REPRODUCTIONS OF PAINTINGS WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ELLIOTT DAINGERFIELD NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917 Copyright, 1917, by The Centuky Co. Published, October, 1917 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY DEAR WIFE JULIA GOODRICH INNESS WHO HAS FILLED MY LIFE WITH HAPPINESS AND WHOSE HELP AND COUNSEL HAVE MADE THIS WORK POSSIBLE PREFACE What I would like to give you is George Inness; as he was, as lie talked, as he lived—not what I saw in him or how I interpreted him, but him—and hav- ing given you all I can remember of what he said and did I want you to form your own opinion. My story shall be a simple rendering of facts—as I remember them ; in other words, I will put the pig- ment on the canvas and leave it to you to form the picture. George Inness, Jr. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the follow- ing persons and institutions who have been of great assistance in furnishing me with the material for this book: Mrs. J. Scott Hartley, Mr. James W. Ells- worth, Mr. Thomas B. Clarke, Mr. Victor Harris, Mr. Martin A. Ryerson and Mr. Ralph Cudney ; The Metropolitan Museum of Art and M. Knoedler & Co., New York City, The Art Institute of Chicago. I wish also to make acknowledgment of the services of my friend, Leize R. Godwin, whose wise counsel has made the task of writing this book a pleasure. [NTRODUCTION Biography is always interesting when true, and valuable in the same degree. It takes on a new char- acter when written by oneself in the form of mem- oirs, yet is seldom fully successful, because of the hu- man temptation to suppress real and interesting facts, or, when sufficient effrontery or courage—if it be courage—exists to tell everything, the reader is likely to be offended, even if interested. In this way the memoirs of Cellini might have been more valuable, though less interesting, if another had set down the truths of this man's inner life and char- acter. It is almost, if not quite, impossible for one to analyze one's own soul and write out for public gaze the secrets hidden there. It shocks the sensitive spirit and creates a wound not to be borne ; therefore, as it seems to me. all biography treads the broad high- way of external facts and passing events, leaving the deep, still pools, which reflect all the spiritual and emotional being, untroubled. In this condition of things we must be content with what we can get, being assured that whatever we can preserve of the life and xi INTRODUCTION impulses of a great man will be of value to the world. It does not follow that intimacy gives one the privi- lege of interpretation, but at least it assures us a measure of truth, which increases its richness in the proportion of sympathy brought to the task, because sympathy begets insight. Without sympathy vir- tually all observation is blind, and no one quality in man's nature is so potent in removing the scales from time vision. We do not know what we should have had if George Inness had written his own biography. Ec- centric it certainly would have been, with slight at- tention 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 delv- ing 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 men- tal 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, dis- xii [NTRODUCTION jointed way that they could not be pieced together by another. In speech his vocabulary was rapid, extensive, ex- treme, not always well chosen as to meaning; but, when supplied with gesture and expression, words took on new meanings, and for the time were under- standable. If reported verbatim, they would have failed of meaning. Just how they would have ap- peared 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 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 flam- ing, very fierce, and assured. His eyes sparkled, and his mane-like hair was tossed about, and 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 paint- ing with new spirit and new insight, and always one could see the growth in power in the work. Who xiii INTRODUCTION 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, and with no great amount of strength otherwise, and always he drove himself to the utmost. His best work was ever ac- complished at white heat and under great emotion. Watching him closely, I many times saw him at work with cold calculation, but without exception these pic- tures 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 insist- ent illness sapping away his life, but rather a burning up. Many canvases wrhich have come down to us in their beauty and glowing glory cost him days of ex- quisite 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 wrhich 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 theoiy 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 xiv ! INTRODUCTION thoughtful men do, that their lure is rather to the man who has do 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 Inn 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 be- hind 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 re- vealed—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 understand- XV — INTRODUCTION ing, in the loving observation which teaches, in the ab- sorption of idea—in such ways men acquire the knowledge which gives them expression, which per- mits 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.
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