Exhibitions
Defining the West: Two Hundred Years of American ImageryMay 2 - June 6, 2008
ARTIST PROFILE: Asher B. Durand
Asher B. Durand stands high in the pantheon of American landscape painting. Despite having come to the vocation relatively late in life, he is almost universally recognized as one of its very finest practitioners. In Durand's work, nature is represented as a living presence. It is the essence and glorious wellspring of the simplicity, richness and goodness of life in the New World.
Durand was born in New Jersey and trained as an engraver. He was widely acknowledged to have become the finest of that field in America by 1835, around which time he resolved to become a painter. Although he was already nearing forty, his success at these new endeavors was apparent well within his own lifetime. Professor Weir's 1876 "Official Report of the American Centennial Exhibition", for instance, quite rightly noted that "(Thomas) Cole and Durand may properly be termed the fathers of American landscape. They first effectually inspired the artistic mind with sympathies whose influence is still felt....Durand stimulated into activity that latent feeling for this branch of art which has become a marked feature of the American school - if the term is admissible - and his rendering of landscape is extremely sensitive and refined."
Durand's preoccupation with American scenery had taken firm root by the 1840's and was perhaps nurtured by his friend Cole, who wrote to him of his enthusiasm for life in the outdoors: "I'm sorry that you are at times so depressed in spirits. You must come and live in the country. Nature is a sovereign remedy....You sit (I know you do) in a close airtight room, toiling, stagnating, and breeding dissatisfaction at all you do, when if you had the untainted breeze to breathe, your body would be invigorated, your spirits buoyant, and your pictures would even charm yourself."
Asher B. Durand stands high in the pantheon of American landscape painting. Despite having come to the vocation relatively late in life, he is almost universally recognized as one of its very finest practitioners. In Durand's work, nature is represented as a living presence. It is the essence and glorious wellspring of the simplicity, richness and goodness of life in the New World.
Durand was born in New Jersey and trained as an engraver. He was widely acknowledged to have become the finest of that field in America by 1835, around which time he resolved to become a painter. Although he was already nearing forty, his success at these new endeavors was apparent well within his own lifetime. Professor Weir's 1876 "Official Report of the American Centennial Exhibition", for instance, quite rightly noted that "(Thomas) Cole and Durand may properly be termed the fathers of American landscape. They first effectually inspired the artistic mind with sympathies whose influence is still felt....Durand stimulated into activity that latent feeling for this branch of art which has become a marked feature of the American school - if the term is admissible - and his rendering of landscape is extremely sensitive and refined."
Durand's preoccupation with American scenery had taken firm root by the 1840's and was perhaps nurtured by his friend Cole, who wrote to him of his enthusiasm for life in the outdoors: "I'm sorry that you are at times so depressed in spirits. You must come and live in the country. Nature is a sovereign remedy....You sit (I know you do) in a close airtight room, toiling, stagnating, and breeding dissatisfaction at all you do, when if you had the untainted breeze to breathe, your body would be invigorated, your spirits buoyant, and your pictures would even charm yourself."
