George Inness Jr.
American, 1854-1926
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George Inness Jr., was one of America's foremost figure and landscape artists and the son of George Inness, an important American landscape painter.
He studied with his father and Léon Bonnat in the 1870s in Europe, where he was made an officer of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Like his father, he was considered a member of the Barbizon School and resisted impressionism.
Later he returned to the United States and became known for his paintings of animals and illustration of hunting scenes. In 1899 he was elected to the National Academy of Design. He lived and worked in Boston, New York City and New Jersey and finally in Tarpon Springs, Florida where he produced most of his life's work. The Unitarian Universalist Church in Tarpon Springs contains a collection of eleven of his works, several of which are murals painted directly to the walls of the church sanctuary.
Inness married the daughter of publisher Roswell Smith, who founded the publishing house The Century Company. Smith's purchase of a large canvas painted by Inness of New Hampshire's Mount Washington helped launch Inness's financial success, which did not come until middle age. Inness later purchased his home "Wentworth Manor" in Montclair, New Jersey, from his father-in-law Smith in 1889. His summer estate at Cragsmoor, New York, known as Chetolah, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.