[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

MESS, George Joseph / Jo [1898–1962]

“Glorious Day”

ca1950

etching and aquatint / 7 inches by 9 inches / edition unknown

Brown County in south-central Indiana became the center of an important regional gathering of artists and developed that reputation during most of the 20th century. George Jo Mess [1898-1962] is not as well known as others who were part of the colony from time to time—names like Gustave Baumann and Alexis Jean Fournier—but is respectable nonetheless. His landscapes have a homey, even homelyness about them; the delicate shadings that can be achieved in aquatint applied to the rounded forms of trees and landscape, such as exemplified here in “Glorious Day” of about 1950.