This early work by prominent American landscape painter George Inness depicts an idyllic pastoral scene with a reaper, a shepherdess and her flock, and a cottage and fenced pastures in the background. Inness preferred depicting this type of civilized, cultivated nature in his work, rather than what he called “savage and untamed” nature. However, his early work was often criticized for drawing inspiration primarily from Old Master landscape paintings rather than studying nature directly. The influence of artists such as 17th-century French landscape master Claude Lorraine is evident in this scene, with its infusion of golden light.

Painted when Inness was only twenty-two, the generic figures, static composition, and conventional treatment of the tree at center in this painting are less dynamic than in his later work, which was infused with new energy through the artist’s encounter with the spiritual tenets of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian and mystic. Yet even this early painting shows the artist’s enduring interest in the ways in which illumination and shadow can transform the natural world and his skill at capturing the essence of a particular scene.