George Inness was an American painter, but that doesn't mean he didn’t get around. 

For example, this work was painted almost immediately after Inness’ four-year trip through Europe. His explorations of France and Italy left him with a new, less naturalistic style of painting, and after his return, he began to craft paintings where one motif or image would dominate and the rest of the landscape would be featured less prominently. This technique is pretty prevalent in this piece, where the titular Autumn Oaks dominate the landscape and the cows, birds, and fields all kind of meld together to create a less-imposing foreground. In modern parlance, think of the trees in this composition as Beyonce and the cows as Jay-Z; sure, they’re still featured, but no one’s leaving this painting talking about how great the cows are. 

The painting also shows Inness' penchant for the Barbizon school, which— prior to becoming an questionable modeling agency in California—  was a collection of 19th century French painters determined to feature the majesty of nature in their work. The Barbizon school also turned Inness into a bit of a drama queen with a tendency to use darker, more impactful colors, rather than the lighter more ethereal palettes he used in his youth. This dramatic, naturalistic style lined up perfectly with Inness’ own priorities, as a well known Man Who Loved Trees. He spoke frequently of his belief that nature and the Divine were inherently intertwined, saying, “The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual nature.”

While Autumn Oaks may seem like a lesson in realism, according to Inness’ son, George Inness Jr., it was a work “from art” rather than from nature, composed and executed entirely from the studio. This is a bit of departure from George the Senior’s usual style, which was to recreate images of nature he saw in the world, but it’s possible that it was an amalgamation of multiple European landscapes. Or, that he made it all up. We’ll never really know.