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Asher Brown Durand | |
|---|---|
 Asher Brown Durand,c. 1869, byAbraham Bogardus | |
| Born | (1796-08-21)August 21, 1796 Maplewood, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | September 17, 1886(1886-09-17) (aged 90) Maplewood, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Known for | Painting,Landscape art |
| Movement | Hudson River School |
Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796 – September 17, 1886) was an Americanengraver and painter of theHudson River School.
Durand was born in, and eventually died in,Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village). He was the eighth of eleven children. Durand's father was a watchmaker and a silversmith.
Durand was apprenticed to anengraver from 1812 to 1817 and later entered into a partnership with the owner of the company,Charles Cushing Wright (1796–1854),[1] who asked him to manage the company's New York office. He engravedDeclaration of Independence forJohn Trumbull during 1823, which established Durand's reputation as one of the country's finest engravers. The project took three years and he was paid $3,000. Between 1829 and 1850, he submitted illustrations and engravings forThe Token and Atlantic Souvenir annualgift book, including the title page for the 1829 volume. Contemporary criticJohn Neal praised Durand's engraving ofThe Wife bySamuel F.B. Morse forThe Atlantic Souvenir (1830), which Neal said was better than the original painting.[2]
Durand helped organize the New York Drawing Association in 1825, which would become theNational Academy of Design; he would serve the organization as president from 1845 to 1861. There he exhibited 181 engravings and paintings between 1826 and 1860.[2]
Asher's engravings on bank notes were used as the portraits for America's firstpostage stamps, the 1847 series.[3] Along with his brother Cyrus he also engraved some of the succeeding 1851 issues.[4] Contemporary art historianWilliam Dunlap dubbed Durand America's first engraver.[2]
Durand's main interest changed from engraving to oil painting about 1830 with the encouragement of his patron,Luman Reed. In 1837, he accompanied his friendThomas Cole on a sketching expedition to Schroon Lake in theAdirondacks Mountains, and soon after he began to concentrate onlandscape painting. He spent summers sketching in theCatskills, Adirondacks, and theWhite Mountains ofNew Hampshire, making hundreds of drawings and oil sketches that were later incorporated into finished academy pieces which helped to define theHudson River School.
Durand is remembered particularly 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 opinions on art in his essay "Letters on Landscape Painting" inThe Crayon, a mid-19th century New York art periodical. Wrote Durand, "[T]he true province ofLandscape Art is the representation of the work of God in the visible creation..."
Durand is noted for his 1849 paintingKindred Spirits which shows fellow Hudson River School artistThomas Cole and poetWilliam Cullen Bryant in aCatskills Mountainslandscape. This was painted as a tribute to Cole upon Cole's death in 1848 and a gift to Bryant. The painting, donated by Bryant's daughter Julia to theNew York Public Library in 1904, was sold by the library usingSotheby's at an auction in May 2005 toAlice Walton for a purported $35 million (the sale was performed 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.
Another of Durand's paintings isProgress (1853), commissioned by a railroad executive. The landscape depicts America's progress, from a state of nature (on the left, where Native Americans look on), towards the right, where there are roads, telegraph wires, a canal, warehouses, railroads, and steamboats. In December 2018, it was purchased by an anonymous donor for an estimated $40 million and given to theVirginia Museum of Fine Arts.[5]
In 2007, theBrooklyn Museum exhibited nearly sixty of Durand's works in the first monographic exhibition devoted to the painter in more than thirty-five years. The show, entitled "Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape", was exhibited from March 30 to July 29, 2007. Durand is interred in Brooklyn, New York, inGreen-Wood Cemetery.
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