Untitled Document

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George Inness

(b.1825, Newburgh, NY; d.1894, Bridge-of-Allan,Scotland)

St. Peter's, Rome, 1857

Oil on canvas

Charles F. Smith Fund

1941.01

George Inness (1825-1894)
St. Peter's, Rome, 1857

George Inness, one of the foremost American landscape painters, was the son of a grocer, born in Newark, New Jersey. After brief training in New York with Régis Gignoux, Inness began to exhibit his landscapes at the National Academy of Design in 1844 and the American Art-Union in 1845. His first trip to Europe, where he visited Florence and Rome, extended from 1851 to 1852. Initially influenced by the classical landscapes of Claude Lorrain, Inness began to incorporate the more painterly qualities of the Barbizon School after his second European visit, to Paris, from 1853 to 1854. Inness became a Swedenborg in the mid-1860s, eventually developing a highly poetic style that enabled him to communicate the spiritual side of nature.

St. Peter's, Rome reveals Inness' special fascination with Italy, a concern he shared with many nineteenth-century American painters. Attracted to both the man-made and natural beauty of the country, Inness explored is historical resonance in his paintings of the city and countryside surrounding Rome. St. Peter's Basilica, which dominates the skyline of the painting, is closely associated with the Eternal City. Inness represented it in a watercolor and three paintings resulting from his first European trip of the 1850s. After a later trip in the early 1870s, he painted two final works depicting the domes of the basilica.

The painting, dated five years after Inness' return to the United States, is based on the watercolor study that was presumably executed from nature. Both works depict St. Peter's from a slope to the northeast of the basilica near the Villa Giulia, a spot recognized in the standard guidebooks of the day as affording a splendid view of the Vatican. A portion of Bernini's colonnade, encircling St. Peter's Square, may be seen to the left. In the foreground, at the bottom of the slope, is the tunnel known as the Arco Oscuro, with a gate in a wall to its left. Inness' view is composite, and a second study, now lost, may have provided some of these additional details.

St. Peter's, Rome presents a seemingly factual record of the site. Presented in the full light of the mid-afternoon, only a small amount of atmospheric moisture veils the buildings in the distance. The foreground is particularly well illuminated, giving the impression of a literal transcription. Comparison with the earlier views, however, reveals Inness' alteration of the composition—with foreground, middle ground, and two distant planes brought in to parallel alignment—in order to achieve greater formality and repose. Foreground verticals, and the addition of the tree on the left, strengthen and balance these insistent horizontals.