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Inness put his foot through it. Officials
from a museum admired a summer evening. Inness smeared his thumb in
yellow, pushed it across the moon. "Stay there," he said,
"until I make you white. . . ." He painted a few draped
figures. Nudes, with the controlling necessity for form, were a tax
upon his patience. They were also a tax upon his knowledge for he had
never learned the grammar of art; he composed with genius, but his
drawing would not parse. He was a master of tone. His pigment, always
transparent, was thinned with a vehicle—Siccatif de Haarlem or
Siccatif de Coutrey—if he was in haste for drying. He admired the
Dutch. He feared the Spanish. "Dishwater," he said, sticking
out his tongue at a picture of Rousseau's. The best collection of his
work is in the Institute of Chicago—22 large canvases, gift of Edward
B. Butler who paid $30,000 for his Home of the Heron. George Inness Jr.
is not represented.
