What is the schooling of George Inness?

Answer 1

He would not "take education" at the town academy, nor was he a success as a green-grocer's boy. He had a strong bent towards art, and his parents finally placed him with a drawing-master named Barker. At sixteen he went to New York to study engraving, but soon returned to Newark, where he continued sketching and painting after his own initiative. In 1843 he was again in New York, and is said to have passed a month in Gignoux's studio. But he was too impetuous, too independent in thought, to accept teaching; and, besides, the knowledge of his teachers must have been limited. Practically he was self-taught, and always remained a student. In 1851 he went to Europe, and in Italy received his first glimpse of real art. He was there two years, and imbibed some traditions of the classic landscape. In 1854 he went to France, and there studied the Barbizon painters, whom he greatly admired, especially Daubigny and Rousseau.

Answer 2

George Inness was born May 1, 1825, near Newburg, N.Y. His family moved in 1829 to Newark, N.J., where Inness was educated and took painting and drawing lessons. In 1841 he worked as a map engraver for a New York firm. He soon gave this up to sketch direct from nature. At the age of 18 he married Delia Miller, who died a few months later. In 1844 he exhibited at the National Academy of Design, and the next year he studied briefly with Regis Gignoux. Inness's earliest pictures show the influence of 17th-century masters such as Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Dughet, and Meindert Hobemma.

In 1847 Inness spent a short time in England and Italy. Three years later he married Elizabeth Hart and spend another 2 years studying and painting in Florence. On returning to New York, he was elected an associate member of the National Academy. Again he returned to Europe, this time to France. Exposure to Camille Coro and the painters of the Barbizon school had a profound effect on Inness's work after 1855. One of his best pictures form this period is the Lackawanna Valley (1855) which shows his new breadth of light and atmosphere well as an openness of composition and a freshness the handling of paint.