A neglected master.(Book review)

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George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonne, by Michael Quick (Rutgers, 2 vols., 1,274 pp., $400 the boxed set)

HERE's an early Christmas-gift idea for that special art-lover on your list. George Inness (1825-1894) is one of the two or three greatest American painters (along with Thomas Eakins and whoever your favorite happens to be), and this sumptuous catalogue raisonne--some two decades in the making--is the definitive record of Inness's achievement. I know: At $400 a pop, the book is probably one you will want to reserve for someone you regard with particular affection--or perhaps someone whom you wish so to regard you. I hasten to point out, however, that this lucky individual might just as well be you as another.

Don't be intimidated by the book's girth or academic appurtenances. This may be an exhaustive inventory of the work of a prolific artist. But with its scores of color plates, it is also a book that can be browsed with enjoyment as well as consulted for information. These handsome volumes, elegantly boxed, will be at home as much on the coffee or (sturdy) bedside table as on the library shelf.

Michael Quick, for many years a curator of American art at the Los Angeles County Museum, ably combines scholarly thoroughness with a connoisseur's eye and a genuine humanist's sense of why art matters. His insistence on examining firsthand the works he describes--he seems to have visited nearly every notable art museum and private collection in the United States--certainly gives this book a rare authority in an age when "object-oriented" criticism is disparaged for the sake of "theory" or expressions of political inclination. The text accompanying the nearly 1,200 items in the catalogue proper is a model of art-historical prose as it used to be--clear, cautious, understated. But Quick also understands that most of us go to art primarily for the spiritual refreshment it offers. His introductory essays for each decade of Inness's work are lively, robust appreciations of a widely esteemed but also widely misunderstood artist.

George Inness occupies a curious place in the pantheon of American artists. He is, as Jacques Barzun said of Walter Bagehot, well-known without being known well. Although he suffered the obloquy of early neglect and poverty--things were so desperate in the 1850s that he once attempted suicide--by the 1860s he was on the upward path towards adulation and financial security. By the time he died, in 1894, he was full of honors, a reigning dean of American art. Among critics and fellow artists, his achievement is almost universally recognized and has been since the 1880s, when he entered his greatest, if also his most elusive, phase. It is recognized but not, except here and there, properly celebrated. I opened to the index of my copy of H. W. Janson's History of Art--a standard text: nary a mention of Inness. A quick check in Clement Greenberg's collected essays turned up only one passing reference to Inness. (I was happy to see that Paul Johnson, in his Art: A New History, at least refers to Inness as the "brilliant American master.")

And even when Inness is discussed, it is often as a member of the Hudson River School, a designation that mistakes geographical propinquity and influence for essential aesthetic filiation. For while Inness was born on the river in Newburgh, N.Y., and learned early on from the Hudson River School masters Thomas Cole and Asher Durand, his mature work explores a different register of aesthetic emotion. In the same way, Inness's early enthusiasm ...