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 :. | A Summer Afternoon | Kindred Spirits | William Cullen Bryant | Landscape | Portrait of the Artist-s Wife and her sister |
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Hayley Lever
(28 September 1876 - 6 December 1958) was an Australian-American painter, etcher, lecturer and art teacher. Richard Hayley Lever was born in Australia on 28 September 1876. Lever demonstrated artistic talent early on, and spent his entire life focusing on this as his craft.
VERNET, Claude-Joseph
French Painter, 1714-1789 Painter. Vernet probably received his first lessons in painting from his father, Antoine, who then encouraged him to move to the studio of Philippe Sauvan (1697-1792), the leading master in Avignon. Sauvan supplied altarpieces to local churches and decorative works and mythologies for grand houses in the area. After this apprenticeship Vernet worked in Aix-en-Provence with the decorative painter Jacques Viali ( fl 1681- 1745), who also painted landscapes and marine pictures. In 1731 Vernet independently produced a suite of decorative overdoors for the h?tel of the Marquise de Simiane at Aix-en-Provence; at least two of these survive (in situ) and are Vernet's earliest datable landscapes. These are early indications of his favoured type of subject, and Vernet would have studied works attributed to such 17th-century masters as Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Dughet and Salvator Rosa in private collections at Aix and Avignon. Three years later Joseph de Seytres, Marquis de Caumont, who had previously recommended Vernet to the Marquise de Simiane, offered to sponsor a trip to Italy.
Pieter de Molijn
(6 April 1595 - 23 March 1661) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver born in England. He was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Austin Friars church in London. Little is known of his early training, but he probably traveled to Italy and in 1616 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. He was a contemporary of Jacob Pinas. He married Geertuyt Huygen de Bie. During the years 1616-1627 he lived in Delft where he remarried after his first wife died. In the marriage notice, his wife Geertruyt de Roovere is from Amsterdam and he is from Delft. De Molijn was possibly a student of Esaias van de Velde. He taught several students, including Gerard ter Borch, Jan Coelenbier, Allart van Everdingen, Christian de Hulst, Anthony Molijn, Jan Nose and Jan Wils.De Molijn was known for his landscapes, but he also made genre pieces, marine scenes, portraits, and architectural pieces. This type of oeuvre is typical for the Italian-bound artists of his day, who paid their way as a jack-of-all-trades. De Molijn died in Haarlem on 23 March 1661.