Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated

Earlier this fall, we announced the discovery of a George Inness painting in our collection. The work, Stream in the Mountains, entered the DMA’s collection over eighty years ago and was thought to be the work of Asher B. Durand, a prominent artist who was part of the Hudson River school of painters in the mid-19th century. At some point between its arrival at the DMA and the early 1970s, doubts to the authorship were raised and the painting was downgraded to possibly being by Durand. Sue Canterbury, The Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art, joined the DMA in August of 2011, and during a visit to the Museum’s Art Storage was intrigued by the strong composition of the piece as well as the history surrounding its attribution. During her research, she noticed strong similarities to Inness’s early work and eventually came across a pen and ink drawing from the Princeton University Art Museum that contained compositional elements found in the DMA’s piece. The most eye-catching of these similarities is the pointing trapezoidal rock that appears in the center of both the drawing and painting. Read more about the attribution in the DMA’s Press Room, and view the painting in the Museum’s American art galleries on Level 4.

George Inness, Stream in the Mountains [formerly: In the Woods], c. 1850, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, bequest of Cecil A. Keating

George Inness, Woodland Scene, 1845–1855, pen and brown-black ink, brush and brown wash heightened with white gouache over traces of graphite on brown wove paper, Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr., x1943-27