George Nelson Cass (American c. 1825 - 1882) New Jersey Meadow

An article in the Boston Daly Globe described one of Cass's landscapes as “a combination of poetry and realism such as seldom seen upon canvas.” Other newspaper articles praised his “purity of tone and fidelity to nature,” and his use of color and atmospheric effects.

Boston artist, George Cass was born in Canaan, New Hampshire and educated at Concord, Massachusetts. He followed his profession in Boston and the adjacent towns of Hingham and Medfield. Cass was a major exponent of the French Barbizon landscape aesthetic as well as a highly regarded still life painter. He lived, for a while, in Medfield, Massachusetts and studied with George Inness who was his neighbor.

Cass exhibited and sold his paintings via auction at art galleries in Boston, including the galleries of the well-known art dealers Williams & Everett. Cass painted scenes of the Hudson River valley, the Connecticut River, the Tom River and the Great Falls in New Jersey, as well as the more rural scenery around the city of Boston, especially Medfield and Hingham.

Cass exhibited at the American Art Union (1869); Boston Athenaeum (1863, 1865; National Academy of Design, 1867; and Boston Art Club, 1874-78.