Moonrise

Dusk settles over a quiet marsh in this 1887 painting by George Inness, and almost nothing stirs. A pale moon lifts behind a huddle of dark trees, casting a thin ribbon of light across a shallow pool. Off to one side, a small solitary figure stands near the water, dwarfed by the wide stretch of land and the heavy, dusky sky above. The colors are deep and muted, greens sliding into browns and grays, with soft edges that blur the line between one thing and the next.

By the time Inness made this work, he had left behind the crisp detail of his earlier years and turned toward something looser and more dreamlike. He cared far more about feeling than accuracy, once explaining that a good painting should touch something in us rather than simply copy the view in front of the eye. That belief guided his later career and earned him a lasting place among American landscape painters. Here he trades every leaf and reed for the sensation of an evening slipping into darkness, the sort of hush that lingers in memory well after the moment has passed.