Inness's family moved to New Jersey when he was a boy. His long, peripatetic, and prolific career began with studies under the itinerant artist, John Jesse Barker, a year working in New York in the shop of a map engraver, and a period of study under the French emigr‚ painter, Regis Gignoux. By 1846, when Inness registered in the Academy school, his name could be annotated "landscape painter," an indication that he already had attained professional status. Indeed, he had exhibited a number of landscape compositions in Academy annuals for the previous three years.
Inness made his first trip to Europe in 1851, passing a year in Italy, but it was his second, taken in 1853, again for about a year, that had a lasting impact on his art. On this visit he was predominantly in France. Thereafter, his landscapes took on attributes of the French artists working in and around Barbizon whose work Inness had experienced first-hand. Perhaps most striking of the changes in Inness's art, accountable to his study of France's progressive painters was the use of a lighter, freer brushstroke that spoke more of atmosphere than of form. This vigorous, expressive use of paint supported his intention in representing Nature, to communicate feelings and sentiments from mind and heart, rather than specific, realistic detail.
By now married and with children, Inness returned from France and settled in Brooklyn, New York. Here he enjoyed the patronage, as well as the acquaintance, of Henry Ward Beecher. Always plagued by delicate health, and an acutely sensitive, nervous temperament, his state of health and mind dictated removal to the calm of Medfield, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, in 1860.
He moved his family again in 1864, this time to Eagleswood, near Perth Amboy, New Jersey, the site of a former Utopian colony. From childhood Inness was always much preoccupied with metaphysics, philosophy, and theoretic premises of religion, and brought his intense religious convictions to his painting of landscape. William Page also took up residence at Eagleswood, and the force of this senior, distinguished artist's intellect had great influence over Inness. It was Page who introduced him to the Swedenborgian faith--to which he was a committed convert by the time he left Eagleswood in 1867. Inness was especially receptive to Swedenborgianism's tenet that all material objects have a spiritual significance and correspondence, both in form and color.
He returned to Europe in 1870, settling in Rome for five years. On coming back to America he went again to live in Medfield, and set up a studio in Boston; a few years later he returned to New York, until in 1878, he finally came to rest in Montclair, New Jersey. His son lived there also, and the house occupied by his daughter and son-in-law, the sculptor, Jonathan Hartley adjoined his. Although he attained some measure of peace and contentment in these years, his physical health remained a problem, and his continued travels to every part of North America, from Niagara Falls to Florida, from the Yosemite Valley to Mexico City, had much to do with seeking respite in beneficial climates.
Thomas B. Clarke began to represent and advise Inness in the the later 1870s, and partly from this assistance his work began to enjoy broad acceptance and admiration, and the accompanying material rewards. In 1877, he was among the founders of the Society of American Artists. A younger generation of artists, and most certainly, prevailing taste finally had caught up with his vision of landscape as a vehicle of emotional expression.
Despite long absences from New York, Inness had remained a consistent exhibitor in Academy annuals, and otherwise kept strong ties with the Academy. This fact is no better proved than that the venerated landscapist's funeral was held in the Academy on August 23, 1894. The appropriateness of these proceeding was remarked upon in the Academy minutes which also eulogized Inness's "intense individuality, manifested in his positive utterances, his enthusiasm, and devotion to his work."
The Inness Gold Medal for landscape painting, instituted by the artist's son, George Inness, Jr., was awarded in Academy annual exhibitions from 1901 through 1918.
