(This is part of a series on the American pioneer landscape Asher B. Durand (1796-1886) based on an article written for the magazine Plein Air in April, 05.)
in June 1837 Asher B. Durand and his friend Thomas Cole left in sketch trip to Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks State from New York. They had carefully planned for the tour, packing the camp stools, umbrellas and easels, and assembling a list of oil colors that included Blue Antwerp, Mummy Brown and Asphaltum.
paint tubes collapsible tin had not been invented yet, so they have decided to grind the pigments on site or to transport the prepared paint in small bladders pigskin, which were prone to rupture or open drying. 1 They brought along bread sour provisions, salt pork, ham, topped with freshly caught trout along the way. shipping Schroon Lake Durand was a turning point, as it forms its resolution leave a successful career in engraving and portrait painting and focus exclusively on landscape painting. Cole was already established as the first landscape artist from America and had made some first experiences with outdoor work. But it was Durand who became the first most enthusiastic champion of painting from nature in oil.
According to Brother Daniel Huntington, Smith "was a pioneer in the paint carefully finished studies directly from nature out of doors." 2 other landscape artists start of his day, there Cole-inclusive "only makes pencil drawings, or at most, slight memos watercolor scenes they intended to paint, help memory by writing on the drawing boards the color and effect. "Cole believes that" the time [should] draw a veil of memory "about the common details of a scene to achieve a poetic sensibility in a painting.
Durand, following the earlier example of Constable and Corot, became deeply engaged by the challenge of working in oil outside in what he called "the school of nature." he went "directly to the fountain-head, and began the practice of faithful transcriptions of" bits "for use in the studio." His custom was to spend two or three months each summer traveling with artist friends in the Catskills , Adirondacks or White Mountains, gathering studies in oil and pencil that would be used as aids to memory when preparing the finished compositions during winters in his New Jersey studio.
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1. Eleanor Harvey The Sketch painted: American Impressions of Nature, 1830-1880, (New York: Harry N. abrades, 1998), 33.
2. Daniel Huntington, Asher B. Durand, a memory address by Daniel Huntington. New York: The Century Association, 1887.
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