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Charles H. Caffin
Being Brief Appreciations of Some American Painters
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A man may be gauged to some extent by the company he chooses, and Inness’s predilection for these three may afford additional evidence of his own personal feeling toward his art. Toward Rousseau he was attracted, no doubt, by the master’s magnificent sincerity, the tireless analysis that resulted in such a comprehension of nature’s forms, within which he, too, felt the existence of a spirituality that led him in time to nature-worship, into a sort of vague pantheism. This spiritual “underlay” in Rousseau’s work must have been very fascinating to Inness, while its concentrated intensity would strike a sympathetic chord in his own ardent temperament. Not, however, so as to lead him in the direction of Rousseau’s sternness. His sympathies were more akin to the tender spirituality of Corot. He missed in the latter’s work the mastery of tangible form and found his range of colour narrow, but was charmed with the exquisite serenity, childlike freshness of soul, and perpetually gracious bonhommie of Corot’s manner—all qualities that one associates with the classic style, and that make the introduction of nymphs into his naturalistic landscapes seem altogether reasonable.
And in this predilection for Corot there is interest, since we are accustomed to hear Inness called “an impetuous and passionate painter.” Yet in his work there is very little of stress and storm. We remember him most affectionately, and seem to find him most characteristically represented in works of such benign repose as “Winter Morning, Montclair,” “The Wood Gatherers,” “The Clouded Sun,” and “Summer Silence.” I do not forget that many of his earlier pictures could be described as passionate; but their turbulence of emotion is seldom associated with any disturbance in nature. The turbulence is in the manner of feeling and painting rather than in the subject, in the interpretation, for example, of a flaming sunset sky over an earth sinking peacefully to slumber. The passion is in the painter himself; and, as he matured, ardour yielded to intensity, to the white heat of concentrated energy. The progress of his art was steadily in the direction of serenity, that highest quality of calm which is the flux of passion.
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