George Inness came of age during the heyday of the Hudson River School painters. He combined their interest in landscape painting with his own profoundly spiritual and philosophical approach to nature. Inness studied briefly with John Jesse Barker but developed his style largely through study of Old Masters like Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa, whose work he copied for the engraving firms Sherman & Sherman and N. Currier (later Currier & Ives). He admired the work of Americans Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand and sought further training from Régis-Francois Gignoux. In 1843 he exhibited at the National Academy of Design for the first time, and he took his first studio in New York two years later. Travel throughout Europe in the 1850s introduced Inness to recent movements, including the Barbizon School of landscape painting, which impacted his style. Inness moved to New England in the 1860s and took on students, including Louis Comfort Tiffany and Carleton Wiggins. He also embraced the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. From 1870 through 1874 he worked in and around Rome, and in 1874, he returned to New England. In 1884, he purchased a farm in Montclair which inspired his masterful late landscapes.
