Tarpon Springs, Florida, the Artist’s Home (George Inness’s Home, Tarpon Springs, Florida; or Tarpon Springs, Florida)

Beginning in 1884, Inness traveled with increased frequency throughout the southern United States, visiting Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida, where he established a home and studio in the sleepy fishing town of Tarpon Springs. He painted many of his great late works from Florida, focusing not on the state’s well-known motifs—such as alligators, tropical beaches, and palm trees—but instead on the pine trees and causeways of the less-traveled Gulf Coast. In works such as Tarpon Springs, Florida, the Artist’s Home, he pushed the Tonalist aesthetic to its limits, experimenting with the expressive and unifying effects of muted colors, soft light, and atmospheric hazes. Rural, poetic landscapes such as this offered both artist and viewer an escape from the complexities of modern industrial life and these works were especially popular with urban collectors in the late nineteenth century, including Duncan Phillips, who remarked upon Inness’s inimitable ability to capture "the warm sweet gloom of our fragrant pine groves of the south."