1796-1886 Asher Brown Durand Galleries His interest shifted from engraving to oil painting around 1830 with the encouragement of his patron, Luman Reed. In 1837, he accompanied his friend Thomas Cole on a sketching expedition to Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks and soon after he began to concentrate on landscape painting. He spent summers sketching in the Catskills, Adirondacks, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, making hundreds of drawings and oil sketches that were later incorporated into finished academy pieces which helped to define the Hudson River School. Durand is particularly remembered for his detailed portrayals of trees, rocks, and foliage. He was an advocate for drawing directly from nature with as much realism as possible. Durand wrote, "Let [the artist] scrupulously accept whatever [nature] presents him until he shall, in a degree, have become intimate with her infinity...never let him profane her sacredness by a willful departure from truth." Like other Hudson River School artists, Durand also believed that nature was an ineffable manifestation of God. He expressed this sentiment and his general views on art in his "Letters on Landscape Painting" in The Crayon, a mid-19th century New York art periodical. Wrote Durand, "[T]he true province of Landscape Art is the representation of the work of God in the visible creation..." Durand is noted for his 1849 painting Kindred Spirits which shows fellow Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant in a Catskills landscape. This was painted as a tribute to Cole upon his death in 1848. The painting, donated by Bryant's daughter Julia to the New York Public Library in 1904, was sold by the library through Sotheby's at an auction in May 2005 to Alice Walton for a purported $35 million. The sale was conducted as a sealed, first bid auction, so the actual sales price is not known. At $35 million, however, it would be a record price paid for an American painting at the time.  Related Paintings of Asher Brown Durand :. | Dover Plains,Dutchess County | Study from Nature Trees,Newburgh, | A Pastoral Scene | Self-Portrait | Pitch Pines,North Mountain Catskills |
Related Artists:
Julius Payer
Julius Johannes Ludovicus Ritter von Payer (2 September 1841 - 19 August 1915) was an Austro-Hungarian arctic explorer and an Arctic landscape artist. Born Julius Payer, his father Franz Anton Rudolf Payer was a retired officer who died when Julius was only fourteen. Payer attended k.k. cadet school in Lobzowa near Krakew (now Poland). Between 1857 and 1859 he studied at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt (near Vienna). In 1859 he served as a sub-lieutenant with the 36th. infantry regiment in Verona, Northern Italy. He participated in the 1859 Battle of Solferino. Between 1860 and 1863 he served at the garrison in Verona, Italy. In 1863 Payer was assigned as a history teacher to the cadet school in Eisenstadt, Austria. After promotion to the rank of lieutenant first class he was posted to the garrison of Venetia. In 1862 he started exploratory tours of the Italian Alps and Hohe Tauern in his free time. From 1864-1868 he explored the Adamello-Presanella Group and the Ortler Alps. He was the first to climb Adamello (3554m). His tours resulted in creating a detailed topographical map at a scale 1:56,000. Due to his achievements, Payer was transferred to the Austrian Military Cartographical Institute in Vienna.
Charles Sprague Pearce
For other people named Charles Pearce, see Charles Pearce (disambiguation). Charles Sprague Pearce (October 13, 1851 - May 18, 1914) was an American artist.
Christopher Wood
1901-30