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George Inness

View of the Tiber near Perugia, 1872-1874

West Building, Ground Floor - Gallery 45

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 98 x 161.5 cm (38 9/16 x 63 9/16 in.)

Credit Line

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

Accession Number

1973.16.1

Artists / Makers

George Inness (artist) American, 1825 - 1894

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower right: G. Inness 1874; lower center, partially painted over: [Geo I]nness Rome 187[2?]

Provenance

Darius Ogden Mills [1825-1910], Millbrae, California, c. 1874 or 1875;[1] his children, Ogden Mills [1856-1929] and Elizabeth Mills [Mrs. Whitelaw Reid], Millbrae, California, c. 1910-1943; Mills Estate, 1943-1947; the daughter of Ogden Mills, Gladys Mills Phipps [Mrs. Henry C. Phipps, 1883-1970]; her son, Ogden Phipps [b. 1908], New York; consigned November 1955 to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York); sold May 1956 to Huntington Hartford, New York; sold to (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York); purchased 1 June 1973 by NGA.

[1] Darius Ogden Mills was a prominent financier and philanthropist. After resigning the presidency of the Bank of California in 1873, Mills made a two-year trip to Europe, and it was probably in Italy or in Paris that he purchased the painting from Inness.

Associated Names

Hartford, Huntington
Hirschl & Adler Galleries
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mills, Darius Ogden
Mills, Elizabeth
Mills, Ogden
Phipps, Gladys Mills
Phipps, Ogden

Exhibition History

1985: George Inness, 5 venues, shown only at National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1985, not in catalogue (other venues: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

2011: George Inness in Italy, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, 2011-2012, not in catalogue.

2011: George Inness in Italy, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, 2011 - 2012, unnumbered catalogue.

Technical Summary

The support is a finely woven twill fabric that has been lined. There is cusping along the top and bottom cut edges. A white ground was applied to the fabric, followed by a reddish-brown imprimatura layer. Infrared reflectography reveals underdrawing, possibly in charcoal, consisting of several gently curving horizontal lines in the background. The paint was built up of many layers in a wet-into-wet technique and manipulated by brush, brush handle, and rubbing to achieve a variety of textural effects. A toned glaze covers the sky, giving the blue paint a yellow cast. X-radiography reveals two large flat rocks in the lower right hand corner, and dense layers throughout the left background. The changes indicated by x-radiography are probably those made during the reworking of the painting between 1872 and 1874. Traction crackle is found in thicker areas of brown paint but the painting is in good condition overall. The varnish has not discolored.

Bibliography

1964: Paintings from the Huntington Hartford Collection in the Gallery of Modern Art. New York, 1964: no. 15, repro.

1965: Ireland, LeRoy. The Works of George Inness: An Illustrated Catalogue Raisonné. Austin, 1965: 166-167, repro. 167.

1974: "La Chronique des Arts." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 83 (February 1974): 139, repro. 138.

1975: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 551, no. 836, color repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 181, repro.

1981: Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: color detail 4-5, 125, repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 547, no. 827, color repro.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 210, repro.

1996: Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 357-360, color repro.