Monday, March 3, 2008

Inness's Lackawanna Valley

The Lackawanna Valley, ca. 1855
George Inness

We mentioned the painting by George Inness of The Lackawanna Valley in class last week. The painting has been much-discussed by art critics who study landscape art. A particularly thorough study is Nicolai Cikovsky's 1970 article, "George Inness and the Hudson River School: The Lackawanna Valley," which appeared in American Art Journal.

In the article Cikovsky repeats Inness's story of finding the original in a Mexican pawn shop in 1891 (p. 48), and much of the latter third of the article is devoted to interpreting the painting itself. This is a nice example of how a single painting could provide the occasion for a solid term paper in this course.

Anyway, the Cikovsky article is well-worth reading if you have the time or interest. The full citation is:

Cikovsky, Nicolai Jr. "George Inness and the Hudson River School: "The Lackawanna Valley"." American Art Journal 2, no. 2, Autumn (1970): 36-57.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a copy of this painting. I am assuming it's a copy. It is in color. Typed in left hand corner of painting....National Gallery of Art Washington D.C.
On the lower right it's typed 779 INNESS (1825-1894) The Lackawanna Valley (gift of Mrs. Huttleston Rogers).

Can anyone tell me what all this means? In other words could this be valuable? Thank you Julie

Anonymous said...

What you have is a copy or a poster. The typed information tells you who the artist is, and who gave it to the museum. It's worth the value of the paper or canvas it's printed on and nothing more.

Anonymous said...

The round house is still there.
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