LIFE, ART, AND LETTERS OF GEORGE INNESS BY GEORGE INNESS, Jr.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS AND MANY REPRODUCTIONS OF PAINTINGS WITH
AN INTRODUCTION BY ELLIOTT DAINGERFIBLD NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO.
1917 Copyright, 1917, by THE CENTCTRY Co. Published, October, 1917
GEORGE INNBSS Painted by Goorgo I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY DEAR
WIFE JULIA GOODRICH INNESS WHO HAS FILLED MY LIFE WITH HAPPINESS
AND WHOSE HELP AND COUNSEL HAVE MADE THIS WORK POSSIBLE PREFACE
What I would like to give you is George Inness as he was, as he
talked, as he lived not what I saw in him or how I interpreted him,
but him and hav ing given you all I can remember of what he said
and did I want you to form your own opinion. My story shall be a
simple rendering of facts as I remember them in other words, I will
put the pig ment on the canvas and leave it to you to form the
picture. INNESS, JE. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the
courtesy of the follow ing persons and institutions who have been
of great assistance in furnishing me with the material for this
book Mrs, J. Scott Hartley, Mr. James W. Ells worth, Mr. Thomas B.
Clarke, Mr. Victor Harris, Mr. Martin A. Byerson and Mr Ralph
Cudney The Metropolitan Museum of Art and M. Knoedler Co., New York
City, The Art Institute of Chicago. I wish also to make
acknowledgment of the services of my friend, Leize R. Godwin, whose
wise counsel has made the task of writing this book a pleasure
INTRODUCTION Biography is always interesting when true, and
valuable in the same degree. It takes on a new char acter when
written by oneself in the form of mem oirs, yet is seldom fully
successful, because of the hu man temptation to suppress real and
interesting facts, or, whensufficient effrontery or courage if it
be courage exists to tell everything, the reader is likely to be
offended, even if interested. In this way the memoirs of Cellini
might have been more valuable, though less interesting, if another
had set down the truths of this mans inner life and char acter. It
is almost, if not quite, impossible for one to analyze ones own
soul and write out for public gaze the secrets hidden there. It
shocks the sensitive spirit and creates a wound not to be borne
therefore, as it seems to me, all biography treads the broad high
way of external facts and passing events, leaving the deep, still
pools, which reflect all the spiritual and emotional being,
untroubled. In this condition of things we must be content with
what we can get, being assured that whatever we can preserve of the
life and XX INTRODUCTION impulses of a great man will be of value
to the world. It does not follow that intimacy gives one the privi
lege of interpretation, but at least it assures us a measure of
truth, which increases its richness in the proportion of sympathy
brought to the task, because sympathy begets insight. Without
sympathy vir tually all observation is blind, and no one quality in
mans nature is so potent in removing the scales from true vision.
We do not know what we should have had if George Inness had written
his own biography. Ec centric it certainly would have been, with
slight at tention paid to those externals which are of interest to
the general reader for he was the most impersonal of men. He was
never interested in himself as a man, though he was interested in
the artistic man He believed in himself as an artist very
profoundly, and his mind, which was most alert, was ever ddv ing
into or solving problems connected with what he called the
principles of painting. Of this sort of thing we should have had a
great deal, more indeed than any of us could have understood,
because he was not always coherent. To himself his reasoning was
very clear indeed, he valued the results of these men tal debates
greatly, many times writing them down. What has become of these
writings I do not know, but no doubt they were written in such a
vagrant, Ks zii INTRODUCTION jointed way that they could not be
pieced together by another...
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