The painting Stream in the Mountains, by George Inness
Maxwell Anderson, the new director of the Dallas Museum of Art, calls it ?a major discovery.?
The DMA announced Friday that a work of art received in a 1931 bequest has been ?reattributed.?
The museum now believes that the piece being called Stream in the Mountains is by George Inness, whom the DMA described as ?one of America?s greatest landscape painters.?
The work has lingered in the museum?s collection for 80 years, having come to Dallas in the throes of the Great Depression as part of a bequest by Cecil A. Keating.
At the time the piece was given to the DMA, the unsigned work carried the title of In the Woods and was, officials say, ?believed to be by the hand of Asher B. Durand, a leading figure of the first generation of the Hudson River school painters in the mid-19th century.?
The DMA adds the following:
?At some point during the next 40 years, doubts as to the authorship of the painting were raised and the attribution was downgraded to possibly being by Durand, which held until August of this year.?
Sue Canterbury, the DMA?s associate curator of American art, ?viewed the painting in the museum?s art storage area and was intrigued by its strong composition and competent execution, as well as by the questions surrounding its authorship. After an examination of the spatial organization and the techniques used in the painting, a number of artists, including Durand, were eliminated as possible creators of the work.
?Close scrutiny of the early works of Inness yielded the greatest degree of parity in matters of execution.Canterbury?s suspicions of Inness?s authorship were clinched, however, when she suddenly came across a pen and ink drawing from the Princeton University Art Museum that contained the key compositional elements of the Dallas work. Of these similarities, the most eye-catching is the pointing trapezoidal rock that appears in the center of both drawing and painting.?
Canterbury followed up by contacting Michael Quick, former curator of American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and author of George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonn?, published in 2007. Quick, the DMA release says, ?analyzed high-resolution images of the work and confirmed it as an autograph work by the artist. He also ?ascertained its date of execution to be approximately 1850, when the artist painted many Berkshire landscapes?a time just prior to his first trip to Europe. Quick further noted that the size and quality of the painting, as well as the small number of works known from this early period, underscore the importance of this discovery. Since the former title,?In the Woods,?was probably not given by the artist, the new title of?Stream in the Mountains?has been assigned to the work to more closely reflect stylistically the titles assigned by Inness at this period of his career.
?The confirmation that?Stream in the Mountains?is by the influential American landscape painter George Inness is a major discovery, and this exciting moment underscores the Museum?s focus on curatorial research in support of our mission,? said Maxwell L. Anderson, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. ?This magnificent early work by Inness joins four additional paintings in the DMA?s collection that stem from the artist?s late career and, thus, will allow us to present visitors with a fuller understanding of the stylistic development of this superb American painter.?
Stream in the Mountains?is on view in the DMA?s American Art galleries on Level 4, museum officials say, ?alongside Asher B. Durand?s?Wooded Landscape,?which is presently on loan to the DMA from the Jean and Graham Devoe Williford Charitable Trust.?
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