Mid-Summer

During his lifetime, George Inness was considered one of the finest landscape painters in America. With a minimum of training—a month under the tutelage of Regis F. Gignoux and three drawing courses at the National Academy of Design—he began his career as a landscape painter in the 1840s. Initially his work displayed precise brushstrokes with careful attention to detail, drawn from the classical style of Claude Lorrain. After a second trip to Europe in 1853, he adopted the looser brushwork and rural themes of the Barbizon school. Deeply spiritual and intellectual, Inness became an ardent follower of Swedenborgianism in the 1860s. Emanuel Swedenborg’s philosophical tenets profoundly influenced Inness, particularly in his later work, as he sought to express nature’s inner spiritual life that existed within the realm of physical appearances.

Midsummer is one of numerous scenes Inness painted of Ètretat on the Normandy coast—a popular site where he spent the summer of 1874.1 With sheep grazing in the hills, the cliffs of Étretat appear in the small clearing to the right, with a glimpse of the sea beyond. A solitary figure, a common trait in Inness’ work, looks contemplatively into the picture plane. Softly mottled areas of green and ocher, which suggest grass and bushes in the foreground and the distant rolling hills, are divided by tall, sinewy tree trucks. Their dark silhouettes, topped with lush green leaves, are placed at carefully spaced intervals and provide the only linear elements in the painting.