The region of Arcadia in ancient Greece had a mythical status in art and literature as an earthly paradise. Idyllic rural areas like the Berkshires, considered modern-day arcadias, attracted artists and writers as well as wealthy summer residents who built country houses as retreats from the increasingly crowded and industrialized cities of the Northeast. The county's reputation was enhanced by writers including Inness's patron Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), a New York minister who promoted living in harmony with nature as a means of achieving spiritual well-being. The Berkshires provided Inness with a pastoral landscape through which he could develop his own ideas about the spiritual dimension of the natural world.

Landscape, 1847-48
Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches
El Paso Museum of Art. Gift of El Paso Art Museum Association Members' Guild

View in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Clearing Off after a September Storm, 1849
Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 1/4 inches
Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming. Gift in Memory of L. G. Phelps and Frances Phelps Belden