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 :. | White Mountain Scenery,Franconia Notch | The Pedlar | The Beeches | Pitch Pines,North Mountain Catskills | Kindred Spirits |
Related Artists:
Hanna Mehls
painted Blumenstillleben in 1900
Theobald Michau
Michau (1676 Tournai - Antwerp 1765) was a conservative Flemish painter of landscapes, more famous in his own time than he is today. He was a pupil of Lucas Achtschellinck. Subjects of the country festivals (Kermesse) that were popularized by David Teniers, father and son to the extent that paintings and tapestries showing such rustic themes were called Tenieres. Michau painted designs and perhaps provided full-scale cartoons for tapestry weavers, for surviving records of the Brussels tapestry workshop of Pieter van der Borcht record Teniers peints par le fameux Sr Michau, such Teniers-like subjects painted by "the famous Sieur Michau". Among his work, on wooden or copper panels, in public collections are the Summer and Winter landscapes in Vienna
Guillaume Descamps
Guillaume-Desire-Joseph Descamps, a painter and engraver, was born at Lille in 1779. He was a pupil of Vincent, but, obtaining the "prix de Rome," he improved himself by travelling in Italy, and became court-painter of Murat in Naples. He died in Paris in 1858. The following paintings were executed by him: The Women of Sparta (in the Lille Museum). 1808. The Martyrdom of St. Andrew (in St. Andre, Lille). Murat on board the Ceres distributing Rewards (engraved hy himself). The Conversion of St. Augustine (in St. Eustache, Paris). The Apotheosis of Cardinal Tommasi (in San Martino di Monti, Rome). The Neapolitan Troops marching out against Capri.