“Landscape with Cattle” by George Inness

c. 1860
Oil on panel, approx. 7 x 11 ¾ in.
LG-C-1937

One of the most celebrated landscape painters of nineteenth-century America, George Inness was born in Newburgh, New York in 1825 and was raised in New York City and Newark, New Jersey. By 1853 his interest in painting took him to France. There, he studied the popular style of the Barbizon School which touted the merits of painting outdoors to capture the spirit of the natural world. Inness especially admired the canvases of Théodore Rousseau, the most radical of all Barbizon artists. Rousseau’s brushy, ethereal style would have a lasting impact on Inness’s American production. His circa 1860 Landscape with Cattle is an embodiment of this mystical style and a treasure of the Locust Grove collection. Depicting a small group of cattle clustered in the foreground of a grassy meadow set beneath the pastel colors of a sunset sky, this bucolic landscape conveys a sense of peace Inness believed could be found in rural life.