It is with great pleasure that I discovered you site and read your entry.

You may be interested in the quotation below, which I found in one of my older art books. By the way I am a Dutch admirer of American figurative art.I am also a bit intriged by the name Westervelt in the museum you mention, that is clearly a Dutch name, do you know somethingmore about the background of this name?

Kind regards.

Boem

Inness, George

1825, Newburg, NY – 1894, Bridge of Alan, Scotland)

“George Inness, the first landscape painter of significance in America, stayed in the East. In his early work he went further than any artists of his generation toward interpreting the rich somnolent beauty of the eastern states, which were just beginning to feel the touch of Industrialism. The Lackawanna Valley is as American as the novels of Mark twain, with the same mixture of colloquial vividness and idyllic feeling we find in Huckleberry Finn . The history of this canvass shows us the close link between commerce and art in America, where even the best artists were called up to do signboards, emblems on carriages and wagons, or as in this case advertisements. In 1854 the Delaware, Lackawana and Western Railroad had built a roundhouse in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the President of the company wished this architectural and engineering achievement widely known. Inness was sent for and told to portray the new building and the surrounding marshalling yards. He painted one picture which was unsatisfactory to his patron. He had shown only one line of rails,all that existed at the time, but the president in a spirit typically American wanted him to show the additional three or four planned for the future. Also he was told to depict four trains, the entire rolling stock of the company, and to paint the letters, D.L and W. on the locomotive. He protested as an artist, but gave in as the head of a family. He needed the seventy-five dollars he was to be paid. Later the railroad sold the painting, and Inness as an old man recovered it in a junk shop in Mexico” (John Walker: Paintings from America, Penguin books, 1951, p.23)

Over at Concurring Opinions, Al Brophy has a great post on Images of Property In American Landscape Art. Check it out. Ben Barros