TitleGeorge Inness
Artist
Daniel Huntington
(American, 1816 - 1906)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 19 3/4 × 15 7/8 in.
Framed: 25 3/8 × 21 3/8 × 1 1/4 in.
SubmissionANA diploma presentation, May 8, 1854
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number606-P
Label TextAcceptance of Inness's qualifying portrait was entered into Academy minutes without identification of its authorship. Such a failure to provide documentation was not uncommon in recording diploma portraits, since the focus of interest in these cases was the sitter. Huntington neither recorded a portrait of Inness in his "Inventory" nor exhibited one. The unsigned likeness had come to be identified as by Huntington by time the Academy published the 1911 inventory of its holdings. Huntington lived up to a few years before preparation of that publication began and, as president of the Academy for most of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, had been the member perhaps most active in its management during that period. It is difficult to believe that George Maynard, who oversaw the collection and the publication of the 1911 inventory, would have attributed a work to Huntington based on a casual guess. Assuming the work is by Huntington, its sketchy brushwork and lack of signature suggest that he did not execute it with foreknowledge it would be presented to the Academy. The portrait was probably cut down to its present size from original dimensions of twenty-five by thirty inches.
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