Sunrise 1887

George Inness made this painting, titled "Sunrise", using oil on canvas sometime in the late nineteenth century. The scene depicts a figure walking through a misty, open field, bathed in the warm glow of the rising sun. It’s a pastoral scene that speaks to the changes in American society during that time. Inness was a leading figure in the American landscape painting movement, which saw a shift from the detailed realism of the Hudson River School to a more subjective, impressionistic style. This change reflected a broader cultural turn away from the celebration of progress and expansion, toward a more contemplative, even spiritual, view of nature. As the US became more industrialized, artists like Inness found value in the landscape as a space for personal renewal and as a symbol of a simpler, pre-industrial past. To understand Inness's painting better, we can look into the art criticism of his time, the rise of spiritual movements like theosophy, and the changing attitudes toward nature in American culture. The meaning of art is always tied to the society in which it is created.