Artwork · 19th century · George Inness

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The Home of the Heron

George Inness1893Oil on canvas76.2 × 115.2 cm

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At a glance

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A single heron stands alone in a marshy clearing at the edge of a wood as the sun goes down.
The American landscape painter George Inness painted it in 1893, the year before he died.
Trees and bird alike have soft, blurred edges, and the whole canvas is sunk in a haze of brown and amber.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on the water's edge at the lower left. On the dim ground stands a bird with its long neck bent in an S. Its beak points forward. It is a heron. It is only a small shadow, made with a few quick dabs of the brush, yet you know at once that it is a bird.
Look at the gap where light comes through the trees. The glow of the setting sun spreads out from behind the trunks in amber. Inness did not paint the leaves one by one. He rubbed them in as dark masses. He wanted to paint the feeling a place left in him more than the way it looked.
Zoom in on the tall trunk standing on the right. It is the darkest vertical line in the picture, rising straight from the ground up into the dark leaves. At the bottom it melts into the dark earth, so you cannot tell where its roots begin. Behind it, thinner trees line up faintly in the haze.
Zoom in just above the heron. A faint band of light runs down from the bright gap in the woods toward the bird. It looks like the last of the evening sun reflected in water. That band ties the far-off light and the heron together in a single line.
Look at the lower right corner. On the brown ground, the signature G. Inness and the year 1893 are written in black paint.

When it was painted

In 1893 Inness was sixty-eight. He lived in Montclair, New Jersey, and in the last years of his life he spent the winters with his family in Tarpon Springs, a town on Florida's Gulf Coast. The Art Institute of Chicago records Florida as the place connected with this painting.

For much of his life, money had been tight. The Art Institute says he finished this picture near the end of his career, after he had at last found some comfort and success. His habit was to make small, quick sketches out in the fields and woods, then use them back in the studio to build his larger canvases.

Inness was a follower of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who taught that a spiritual world lies behind the visible one. Many scholars connect that belief to the late paintings, where edges dissolve and light seems to glow from within.

The summer after he painted this, Inness died while traveling in Europe, at Bridge of Allan in Scotland. The 2007 catalogue raisonné of his work lists this canvas under another title as well, The Sun's Last Reflection.

In 1911 the Chicago businessman Edward B. Butler gave the painting to the Art Institute. Today the museum owns more than two dozen canvases by Inness.

Look again at the heron at the lower left. Keep that other title in mind, The Sun's Last Reflection, and the faint streak of light starts to look like a path leading straight to the bird.

The painter

George Inness

1825–1894

When painting this, the artist was about 68 years old

All paintings by George Inness →

More by the same painter

Early Morning, Tarpon Springs1892

Questions to think about

Look for itBesides the heron, can you find any other sign of life hidden in these woods?
Why?Why do you think Inness blurred the outlines of the trees and the bird instead of painting them sharply?
What about you?A sunset often holds a feeling no photo can capture. In our busy days, how often do we actually stop and look at moments like that?

Same period