George Inness

William T. Evans, New York

American Art Association, New York, 1900, lot 270 (consigned by the above)

[with] William Clausen, New York (acquired from the above)

Mrs. Sarah M. Gibb

Acquired as a gift from the above in 1917 by the present owner

“In the Studio and Gallery,” New-York Daily Tribune, 30 October 1882, p. 2

“The Academy Exhibition,” The World, New York, 31 March 1883, p. 4

“National Academy of Design,” New-York Daily Tribune, 31 March 1883, p. 5

Charles M. Kurtz, ed., Illustrated Art Notes; Fifty-Eighth Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, 1883, no. 41, p. 40, illustrated

”Pictures; The National Academy of Design,” The Sun, New York, 2 April 1883, p. 2

G.W. Sheldon, “The Academy Exhibition,” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 27, April 1883, p. 220, illustrated

“The Exhibition, National Academy of Design,” Boston Evening Transcript, 11 April 1883, p. 6

Clarence Cook, “The Academy Exhibition,” The Art Amateur, vol. 8, May 1883, p. 127

“Art and Artists,” Boston Evening Transcript, 16 May 1883, p. 3

"American Pictures at the Munich Exhibition,” The Art Amateur, no. 3, 1883, p. 92

S.R. Koehler, The United States Art Directory and Year-Book, New York, 1884, no. 22, illustrated

Nicolai Cikovsky, Life and Work of George Inness, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965, p. 257, fig. 89

LeRoy Ireland, Works of George Inness: An Illustrated Catalogue Raisonné, Austin, 1965, no. 1046, p. 259, illustrated

William H. Truettner, “William T. Evans, Collector of American Paintings,” The Americana Art Journal 2, 1971, p. 75

The Brooklyn Museum, American Paintings: A Complete Illustrated Listing of Works in the Museum’s Collection, Brooklyn, 1979, p. 68, illustrated

Karen B. Crenshaw, “A Study of George Inness’ Painting Technique,” American Institute of Conservators: Preprints, 1981, p. 61

Michael Quick, George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, New Brunswick, 2007, no. 776, pp. 110-12, illustrated

A Summer Morning is a harmonious pastoral scene featuring a woman and child surrounded by grazing cattle. The large-scale composition hung prominently in the National Academy of Design's spring exhibition in 1883, and was also the painting that Inness selected to represent him at the international art exhibition in Munich later that same year. He completed the present work while spending his summers in Milton, Massachusetts, during a period in which he became particularly drawn to painting animals. His artist son, George Inness, Jr., was especially fond of illustrating animals in the 1880s, and even had a designated barnyard studio to facilitate his portrayals of farm animals. It is likely that Inness would have utilized his son's studio on occasion, as he shared his interest in depicting peaceful bovine subjects in outdoor atmospheres.

In the catalogue raisonné entry for the present painting, Michael Quick states the following: "Aside from its ostensible subject, this painting is one of the most prominent demonstrations of Inness's mastery of the portrayal of the action of daylight, a mastery gained during his summers in Milton. The light has an active quality, almost dematerializing some background foliage and at the same time creating form in flora and fauna in the foreground. Daylight blasts and fades the distances as it energizes the shaded foreground. Inness achieved these effects partly through modifications of form and partly through value and color, including lots of yellow in the lighted greens. Over the armature of a conceptual drawing - still discernible in the firm shapes of the central tree and the cows - Inness attempted to re-create a naively perceptual response to a scene, reproducing the way things looked, rather than the way he knew them to be. This attention to the actual appearance of lighted forms was intended to give the scene a vivid believability, so that viewers would respond as did one critic, who felt as though he might "walk into the picture."' (Michael Quick, George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, New Brunswick, 2007, p. 111).