
Image

The Lackawanna Valley, by George Inness, c.1856.
Credit: National Gallery of Art, Gift of Mrs. Huttleston Rogers, 1945.4.1
Initially repelled at the idea of painting an ugly modern railroad in the midst of Nature's beauty, George Innes (1825-1894) accepted the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad commission to document its achievements and created a masterpiece of American landscape painting.