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Sublime landscape of a marshy open field and distant tree and hedge in autumn.

A person wearing red top and blue pants in the center distance walks along a brown path of an open marsh field depicted in warm green hues. A tall skinny wispy tree in autumn colors stands out left of center, leaning slightly left. A small pool of water reflecting the sky is on the left. A tall browning hedge that lost its leaves is in the distant middle of the painting, allowing us to see through to a few house rooftops in the far distance. The sky is a soft blue with some drifting clouds. Signed in lower left corner.

Gallery Text

Blurred, softly painted, and almost otherworldly, October Noon differs markedly from the realistic, crisply rendered American landscapes that hang nearby, such as Bierstadt’s magisterial view of the Rockies. Though Inness probably based this scene on the flat, marshy terrain near his New Jersey studio, his image retreats from hard facts and recognizable places to suggest a peaceful, imagined, or dimly remembered landscape. Formally evocative of work from the French Barbizon School, Inness’s quiet paintings found favor among New York patrons overwhelmed by the rumble of the new modern city. As one New York critic put it, “Now and then [Inness] has a picture of perfect peace. . . . It tranquilizes the soul even to look upon it.”

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.137
People
George Inness, American (Newburgh, NY 1825 - 1894 Bridge of Allan, Scotland)
Title
October Noon
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1891
Places
Creation Place: North America, United States
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/230338

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2100, European and American Art, 17th–19th century, Centuries of Tradition, Changing Times: Art for an Uncertain Age
View this object's location on our interactive map

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
77.8 x 113.4 cm (30 5/8 x 44 5/8 in.)
framed: 101.3 x 139.4 x 9.2 cm (39 7/8 x 54 7/8 x 3 5/8 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: l.l.: G. Inness 1891

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Walter D. Blair, Tarrytown, NY; sold to M. Knoedler & Co., 1919; sold to Charles M. Schwab, New York, NY, 1920; sold at Schwab estate sale, Tobias, Fischer and Co., NY, 1940, lot no. 47; sold to M. Knoedler & Co. Inc., New York, NY; sold to John Levy Galleries, 1942; acquired through Martin Birnbaum by Grenville L. Winthrop, 1942; his bequest to the Fogg Art Museum, 1943.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.137
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • LeRoy Ireland, The Works of George Inness: An Illustrated Catalogue Raisonné, University of Tennessee Press (Austin, TX, 1965), p. 346, no. 1359, ill.
  • Dorothy W. Gillerman, ed., Grenville L. Winthrop: Retrospective for a Collector, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1969), p. 238
  • Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., George Inness, Praeger (New York, NY, 1971), p. 55, pl. IX
  • Louise Todd Ambler and Kenyon Castle Bolton, III, "American Painting at Harvard", Antiques (New York, NY, November 1972), vol. 102, no. 5, pp. 876-883, pp. 877, 879, fig. 8
  • Kenyon Castle Bolton, III, Peter G. Huenink, Earl A. Powell III, Harry Z. Rand, and Nanette C. Sexton, American Art at Harvard, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1972), cat. 98, ill.
  • The Life and Work of George Inness (New York, NY, 1977), pp. 322, 366
  • Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. and Michael Quick, George Inness, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Harper & Row (Los Angeles and New York, 1985), pp. 10-11, fig. 1
  • Eric M. Rosenberg and Miriam Stewart, The Harvest of 1830: The Barbizon Legacy, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 24
  • Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., George Inness, Harry N. Abrams, Inc./National Museum of American Art (New York, NY, 1993), ill. p. 109
  • Eugene Taylor, "The Interior Landscape: George Inness and William James on Art from a Swedenborgian Point of View", Archives of American Art Journal (1997), vol. 37, nos 1-2, pp. 2-10, p. 7, ill.
  • Kate Smith, "A Study of George Inness's Underdrawing Technique" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, 2002), Unpublished, pp. 1-14 passim
  • Stephan Wolohojian, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New York, 2003), pp. 452-53, cat. 204, ill.
  • Adrienne Baxter Bell, George Inness and the Visionary Landscape, exh. cat., National Academy of Design / George Braziller, Inc. (New York, NY, 2003), pp. 37, 102-103, 172, cat. 25, ill.
  • Stephan Wolohojian, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, France, 2003), p. 466-467, cat. 204, ill.
  • Rachel DeLue, George Inness and the Science of Landscape, University of Chicago Press (Chicago and London, 2004), pl. 14, back cover, and p. 222, fig, 76, det.
  • Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., "George Inness and Tonalist Uncertainty", The Poetic Vision: American Tonalism, ed. Ralph Sessions, Spanierman Gallery (New York, 2005), pp. 51-60, p. 53, fig. 17
  • Michael Quick, George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ and London, 2007), p. 216, pl. 204, p. 261, fig. 296, p. 267, p. 311-313, no. 1003, ill.
  • Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. and Melissa Renn, American Paintings at Harvard, Volume One: Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels by Artists Born before 1826, Yale University Press (U.S.) and Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge and New Haven, 2014), pp. 27, 300-01, cat. 261, ill.
  • Rebecca Bedell, Moved to Tears: Rethinking the Art of the Sentimental in the United States, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ, 2018), pp. 100-102, fig. 53, fig. 54 (detail), repr. title page (detail)

Exhibition History

  • Exhibition of Paintings by George Inness , Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, 05/01/1935 - 09/01/1935
  • American Art at Harvard, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/19/1972 - 06/18/1972
  • The Harvest of 1830: the Barbizon Legacy, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 08/25/1990 - 10/21/1990
  • The Persistence of Memory: Continuity and Change in American Cultures, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 07/29/1995 - 05/13/2001
  • A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10/23/2003 - 01/25/2004
  • George Inness and the Visionary Landscape, National Academy of Design, New York, 09/17/2003 - 12/28/2003; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, 01/24/2004 - 04/18/2004
  • For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/16/2004
  • HAA 10 Survey Course (S421): The Western Tradition: Art Since the Renaissance (Fall 08 Rotation 1), Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/13/2008 - 10/19/2008
  • HAA 10 Survey Course (S421): The Western Tradition: Art Since the Renaissance (Fall 09 Rotation 1), Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 09/02/2009 - 10/12/2009
  • 32Q: 2100 19th Century, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 07/10/2018 - 01/01/2050

Subjects and Contexts

  • Collection Highlights
  • Google Art Project

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu