The Mill Stream, Montclair, New Jersey

George Inness painted this view of the mill stream near Montclair, New Jersey in the late phase of his career when his landscapes had become vehicles for Swedenborgian spiritual vision rather than topographic description. The Mill Stream, like his Spring Blossoms canvas, represents his ability to transform a familiar New Jersey subject into a meditation on the divine immanence he believed suffused the natural world. Inness spent many years in Montclair, and the town's streams and orchards became recurring motifs in his late, most personal work. The Minneapolis Institute of Art preserves this characteristic late canvas.

Inness renders the mill stream in his late manner of atmospheric dissolution, with the water and surrounding foliage built through soft, blurred strokes that suggest mood and light rather than describing specific forms.