View on Lake Nemi
Date: 1871
Dimensions:20 x 30 in. (50.8 x 76.2 cm)
Credit Line: San Antonio Museum of Art, given in memory of William A. Remy by his family
Object number: 96.3
Signed: Signed lower right: G. Inness Rome 1871
Provenance: Possibly with Doll & Richards, Boston (possibly sale, Doll & Richards, Leonard & Co., Auctioneers, Boston, Third Special Sale: George Inness Paintings, December 13, 1876, no. 17); R.G. Otis, Colorado Springs, Colorado, then his estate, to 1952; Henry B. Dielmann, San Antonio, Texas, 1952; William E. Remy, San Antonio, Texas, 1974; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, 1996
Label TextHere, Inness seemingly has taken as his subject Lake Nemi, a volcanic crater located just south of Rome in an area known as Castelli Romani that the artist visited during his sojourn in Italy from 1870–74. While Inness painted Lake Nemi several times, in this instance he has cropped the composition, bringing the hillside town to the foreground whose sunlit buildings help to draw the viewer’s eye back to the warm glow of the sky—Inness’s true subject. As Inness developed his own artistic style, he increasingly rejected the high realism of his Hudson River School contemporaries and instead sought to convey a spiritual sensation through his landscapes. Lake Nemi and the accompanying town each serve as vehicles of light—reflecting the golden hue of the sun that radiates behind and pierces through the softly rendered clouds creating the atmospheric glow for which Inness is best known.
(Regina Palm, 2022)
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
