Spring Blossoms, Montclair, New Jersey

George Inness

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

George Inness, who began his career painting in the Hudson River School mode, embraced a variety of styles throughout his long career. Exposure to the work of French Barbizon artists as well as to the pantheistic philosophy of Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg led him to develop a more personal approach to painting. Inness’s later landscapes, such as this work, grew increasingly expressive and atmospheric. By the 1880s, a younger generation of European-trained artists—whose work was informed by the French Barbizon and Impressionist painters as well as by the Aestheticism of James McNeill Whistler—celebrated Inness as an American Original.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art