Life, art, and letters of George Inness . worldly minded, a myth to the mere intellect. Iwould not give a fig for art ideas except as they repre-sent what I, in common with all men, need most—thegood of our practice in the art of life. Rivers,streams, the rippling brook, hillsides, sky, and clouds,all things that we see, will convey the sentiment of thehighest art if we are in the love of God and the desireof truth. It is difficult to say which of all the men of Barbisonranked first in my fathers estimation, for he said: As landscape-painters I consider Rousseau, Dau-bigny, and Corot among the
Life, art, and letters of George Inness . worldly minded, a myth to the mere intellect. Iwould not give a fig for art ideas except as they repre-sent what I, in common with all men, need most—thegood of our practice in the art of life. Rivers,streams, the rippling brook, hillsides, sky, and clouds,all things that we see, will convey the sentiment of thehighest art if we are in the love of God and the desireof truth. It is difficult to say which of all the men of Barbisonranked first in my fathers estimation, for he said: As landscape-painters I consider Rousseau, Dau-bigny, and Corot among the very best. Daubignyparticularly and Corot have mastered the relation ofthings in nature one to another, and have obtained thegreatest works, representations more or less nearlyperfect, though in their day the science underlyingimpression was not fully known. The advance al-ready made is that science, united to the knowledge ofthe principles underlying the attempt made by thoseartists, will, we may hope, soon bring the art of land- 30. EARLY INFLl/KNCKS scape-painting to perfection, Rousseau was perhapsthe greatest French landscape-painter, but 1 have seen in this country some of the smaller things ofCorot which appeared to me to be truly and thor-oughly spontaneous representations of nature, al-though weak in their key of color, as Corot always his idea was a pure one and he had long been ahard student. Daubigny also had a pure idea, and sohad Rousseau. There was no affectation in thesemen, there were no tricks of color. But the troublewith Rousseau was that he has too much detail. He slittle, he s twopenny. He s little with detail, andthat takes away from his artistic worth. My father was not over-enthusiastic about Corot,but thought he was a poet and a tonist. The man, Ibelieve, who had the greatest influence on himwas the English artist Constable, about whom hewas very enthusiastic. I believe more of Constableshows in Innesss works than any of the Frenchschool. He
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