1893, George Inness, Sunset -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: Inness revisited the composition of Sunset several times in the last years of his life. Here, three figures stand in an open meadow beside an enclosure of grazing sheep. As a woman leads a small child by the hand, a single lamb lifts its head. A traditional emblem for innocence as well as a Christian symbol of Jesus, the lamb alerts us to the painting's allegorical significance. Bathed in the red light of the setting sun, the area on the far side of the fence can be understood as the spiritual world, inhabited by innocent souls and God--the sun--and separated from the material realm of the woman and child. The painting may reflect the artist's meditation on his own mortality.
1893, George Inness, Sunset -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: Inness revisited the composition of Sunset several times in the last years of his life. Here, three figures stand in an open meadow beside an enclosure of grazing sheep. As a woman leads a small child by the hand, a single lamb lifts its head. A traditional emblem for innocence as well as a Christian symbol of Jesus, the lamb alerts us to the painting's allegorical significance. Bathed in the red light of the setting sun, the area on the far side of the fence can be understood as the spiritual world, inhabited by innocent souls and God--the sun--and separated from the material realm of the woman and child. The painting may reflect the artist's meditation on his own mortality.