The American artist George Inness (1825-1894) was primarily a landscape painter, who developed a personal, subjective form of impressionism.

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 Régis 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 spent another 2 years studying and painting in Florence. On...