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 :. | Alpine View,Near Meyringen | Notch House,White Mountains,New Hampshire | Beacon Hills on the Hudson River, | Sorrento | Represent |
Related Artists:
Lorens Pasch the Younger
(1733-1805) was a Swedish painter He grew up in an artistic family (he was the brother of Ulrika Pasch, alongside whom he was elected to the Art Academy in 1773), but his father Lorens Pasch the Elder wanted him to become a priest. He was thus sent to study in Uppsala aged 10. However, he decided on an artistic career after all and began an apprenticeship in his father's studio before going to Copenhagen, with introductions from his wealthy and influential uncle Johan Pasch. There he studied painting for three years in the studio of Carl Gustaf Pilo. Despite good offers of studio-apprenticeships and commissions from Sweden, he then set off for Paris in 1758 to complete his artistic education. There he specialised in history painting in the studios of Eustache Le Sueur and François Boucher (though for financial reasons he also continued his training in portraiture) and became friends with fellow-Swede Alexander Roslin. In 1764 he left Paris and got back to Sweden in 1766. He fully completed his training in the studio of the French painter Guillaume Taraval, who in 1735 founded the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Soon after his arrival back in Sweden Pasch's gained a great reputation as a portraitist, gaining favour and commissions from the royal court and gaining the esteem of Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden and his queen Louisa Ulrika - one of his most notable works is his Portrait of Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. He served as a professor at the Academy of Arts from 1773 to his death, becoming its director on Pilo's death in 1793. At the end of his life he concentrated more on training young artists and managing the Academy than on painting. He died unmarried in 1805 and due to his powerful portraits remains one of the most respected painters of the Gustavian era in Sweden.
Christian-Bernard Rode
1725-1797
Joseph Highmore
1692-1780 British Joseph Highmore Gallery Joseph Highmore (3 June 1692?C1780), was a British portrait and historical painter. Born in London in 1692, he displayed early a strong ability, particularly for the fine arts, which was discouraged by his family, who rather saw him as a solicitor. However, all his spare time was dominated by his favourite pursuit and, upon the ending of his clerkship at the age of seventeen, he abandoned law and resolved to trust in future to his talents as a painter alone for his chance of fame and fortune. His gamble paid off and he continued to improve his reputation and upon the revival of the Order of the Bath in 1725, he was selected to paint the knights in full costume. The years 1732 to 1734 were spent on a tour of the Netherlands and France and on his return to England, he applied himself to perfecting his talent, which continued for the next 50 years of his life, until his death. Among his best works are biblical "Histories", historical painting being a style which Highmore had picked up on his travels in France. One such biblical painting is Hagar and Ishmael, which was donated to the Foundling Hospital for the purpose of decorating its Court Room (the room where the Court of Governors met). The painting is still part of the Foundling Hospital art collection and can now be seen at the Foundling Museum in London. As an author, he was best known for the rather longwindedly titled Critical Examination of Reubens' two Paintings in the Banqueting House and Observations on Bodwell's Pamphlet against Christianity.