Clearing Up

Inness painted this work at a pivotal moment in his career, after two extended periods of study in Europe had brought him into contact with the painters of the Barbizon School, especially Camille Corot and Theodore Rousseau, whose belief in direct observation of atmosphere and transient light reshaped his practice. Where his earlier canvases followed the Hudson River School in precise topographical description, works of the late 1850s and early 1860s like Clearing Up show Inness moving toward a freer, more emotionally responsive handling of the American countryside. The painting belongs to a group of New England storm-clearing subjects that collectors and critics of the period prized for their balance between observed meteorological fact and felt mood: the storm is not theatrical ruin but ordinary weather, and the light returning across the valley floor carries the specific quality of a New England autumn afternoon. Inness would later develop this atmospheric approach further into the Tonalist dissolved harmonics of his final decade, making works like this one a crucial hinge in American landscape painting between the luminist clarity of his contemporaries and the near-monochromatic reverie of his late style.