Spring Blossoms, Montclair, New Jersey 1891?
George Inness (1825-1894)
Oil and crayon or charcoal on canvas; 29 x 45 1/4 in. (73.7 x 114.9 cm)

Description:
This late work by Inness has been variously dated to 1887, 1889, and 1891. This confusion has resulted from differing interpretations of the five digits, "18891," which Inness inscribed in dating the canvas (the nine has been misread at times as a seven). When the painting was first exhibited at the American Fine Arts Society in New York in 1894, its date was given as 1891, and this presumably is the correct dating for the work. Inness lived in Montclair the last sixteen years of his life, a period in which his style evolved into its mistiest, most spiritualized, and most self-expressive. The post-Centennial era also saw Inness elevated to the status of America`s most beloved landscape painter, supplanting the formerly dominant Hudson River School artists.