Part 2: America Durand

Part 2: America Durand - (part 2 of a series) Many of Durand colleagues including Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford and Jasper Cropsey, crossed oceans and continents in search of ever more exotic subjects to paint. However, Durand believes that the best grounds could be found in his own country. "Go not abroad in search of material," he wrote, "and virgin charms of our native land have claims on your deepest affections." 3

John Durand noted that his father loved the wilderness in upstate New York and New Hampshire "before the railways had entered their housing, where only a few scattered people could be found. "He recalled that his father spent all his spare time" devoted to painting from nature. "

"he put his palette before leaving his house in the city and won, with an easel homemade and folding his favorite field sketches ... he was always ready to rough on the corduroy, muddy or sandy roads in stage coach and buck-boards ... every time the colors or shapes of rocks, trees or mountains answered his search for the beautiful. " 4

Best known for his painting Kindred Spirits, which depicts Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant standing together in a pod Catskill, Durand produced a series of landscapes from the inside mossy forests to calm streamscapes agricultural and pastoral scenes. Most researchers attribute Cole and Durand also the cofounders of the Hudson River School, first unique tradition of American painting.

After the death of Cole in 1848, Durand was recognized as the leader of the movement, for sixteen years as president of the National Academy of Design, where he has set aside a special room for the exposure studies of nature. Durand's work, many of its so-called "nature's transcripts," was the subject of a major retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum a few years ago.

Linda Ferber, curator of the exhibition, Durand described as "one of the first American painters to give models classical composition based on European prototypes and paint directly in response to what he saw in nature. " 5

--- ------

3. Asher B. Durand, "Letters on landscape painting. Letter II" Pencil 1, no. (January 10, 1855), 34.

4. John Durand, Life and Times of AM Durand, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1894. Reprint New York :. Graphics Kennedy, 1970). 183-84

5. Linda Ferber and William Gerdts. The new way: Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites American
. (New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1985), 254.

Books: The Painted Sketch: American Impressions of nature 1830-1880

the American landscape Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)

------