51.12 x 76.52 cm (20 1/8 x 30 1/8 in.)
Oil on canvas

Inscriptions: Lower right: G. Inness 1875

Classification: Paintings

Object is currently not on view

"The Church Spire" was probably painted in North Conway, New Hampshire, where Inness spent the summer of 1875 (see also "Kearsarge Village," 30.102). Inness had just returned from a four-year sojourn in Italy and France, and he now sought to reestablish himself as a painter of American landscapes. He traveled to the White Mountains in New Hampshire with his son and with fellow artist John A. Monks in search of native subject matter. After sketching in the field, he developed his studies into finished paintings in a studio on the second floor of an old North Conway school house. Although Inness was more concerned with rendering weather effects than topographical details, the distinctive shape of the mountain in the background of "The Church Spire" suggests that it is probably a northern view across the Saco River bottomland (known as the Intervale) toward the White Mountains.

Hudson River artists from John Frederick Kensett to Albert Bierstadt had painted panoramic landscapes in this same area earlier in the nineteenth century, but Inness depicted the familiar scenery in new ways. His view was more intimate, and he employed strong colors to accentuate the weather conditions. The warm shades of salmon and orange cast by the setting sun on the receding storm clouds give "The Church Spire" an uplifting and hopeful quality. A critic for the "Daily Evening Traveller" recognized the mystical character of Inness's New Hampshire work, finding in his paintings "the rendering of the vitality of nature, and the spiritual element which gives to the work an internal force that carries the mind above what we call nature, to the Original Source" (Boston, September 16, 1875, p. 1).

Janet Comey

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gift of the Misses Louisa W. and Marian R. Case, 1920
Accession number: 20.1863

Provenance/Ownership History: The artist; James Brown Case, Boston, before 1907; to Mrs. James G. Freeman and the Misses Louise W. and Marian R. Case, his daughters, by 1919; to MFA, 1920, gift of Misses Louise W. and Marian R. Case.

This object is included in the following Selected Tour(s):

• American Paintings