The Brook, Montclair

Although Inness never used the word “Tonalism” to describe his painting, the artist was considered one of the originators of the group, even though he began his career as a Hudson River School painter. He experimented with a new, less descriptive approach to the landscape around the mid-1870s. By 1882, the year that The Brook, Montclair was painted, a critic of the New York Evening Post complained that Inness “never gives us a decisive form, never a well-defined contour,” and that “everything with him is softened and is, as it were, melting away.” Another critic writing in that same year in the Boston Advertiser described Inness’ paintings as “hardly more than the ghost of a landscape.”

In part, Inness’ transformation from the Hudson River School tradition to the more personal, Tonalist style was sparked by his interest in the religious teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The belief that all things material were spiritually charged and that the earthly realm was continuous with the heavenly, led the artist to a uniquely spiritual style of imagery.

This scene is a view of Toney’s Brook in Montclair, New Jersey, where the mature artist moved with his family to set up his studio in the summer of 1878. It was in Montclair that Inness created some of his most memorable landscapes.