Arthur Turnbull Hill (American, 1868-1929) "Sunset East Hampton"

Catalogue Note: American painters in the final decades of the 19th century moved steadily into the transition heralded by George Inness from the heroic, nationalistic landscape into a phase more personally visionary. Their painting focused less on the exact replication of nature than on scenery, as a spiritual manifestation and it tended toward impressions and depictions of personal experience. Landscape painting tends to reflect changes of social and industrial growth, and was in one way escapist but the combination laid the foundation for a new realism.
By the end of the 19th century landscape painting had come full circle and was burgeoning with new perspectives. The great 19th century artist, George Inness, was profoundly responsible for influencing the painters who where to follow him upon his contact with the Barbizon school. Originally, the work of Cole and Durand and Old Masters prints were his true models and taking hikes in the wild where he chose pastoral scenes close to home. A change took hold after a trip that Inness took to Europe, particularly France, where he came under the influence of the Barbizon School. Theodore Rousseau, Charles Daubigny and Camille Corot became his new idols and he decided to abandon the meticulous naturalism of the Hudson River School in favor of his own subjective expression of nature. He no longer portrayed what he saw literally, but tried to project his own vision into his paintings. Inness was seeking to capture the mood of the landscape through a lyrical and painterly style, his own personal Impressionism, for which he became famous. Inness also filled his canvases with the poetic atmosphere in the manner of Turner, whose work had impressed him and he combined this luminist approach with a pastoral quality derived from the Barbizon painters of France.