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 :. | The First Harvest in the Wilderness | The Catskills | Landscape (Birch and Oaks) | Frontispiece with Trompe | Naivete |
Related Artists:
Pier Francesco Cittadini
Italian, 1616-1681,was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Bologna and painting lush and rich still lifes. Also known as Pier Francesco Cittadini. Originally trained in Rome then studied with Guido Reni. Also called il Milanese. He painted still life pictures. His two sons Giovanni Battista Cittadini and Carlo Cittadini were also still life painters.
Charles Hazelwood Shannon
English painter, printmaker and collector , 1863-1937 English artist, was born at Sleaford in Lincolnshire, the son of the Rev. Frederic Shannon. He attended the City and Guilds of London Art School (then known as South London School of Technical Art, formerly Lambeth School of Art), and was subsequently considerably influenced by his lifetime partner Charles Ricketts[2] and by the example of the great Venetians. In his early work he was addicted to a heavy low tone, which he abandoned subsequently for dearer and more transparent colour. He achieved great success with his portraits and his Giorgionesque figure compositions, which are marked by a classic sense of style, and with his etchings and lithographic designs. The Dublin Municipal Gallery owns his circular composition "The Bunch of Grapes" and "The Lady with the Green Fan" (portrait of Mrs Hacon). His "Study in Grey" is at the Munich Gallery, a "Portrait of Mr Staats Forbes" at Bremen, and a "Souvenir of Van Dyck" at Melbourne. One of his most remarkable pictures is "The Toilet of Venus" in the collection of Lord Northcliffe. Several of his portrait works are on display in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Complete sets of his lithographs and etchings have been acquired by the British Museum and the Berlin and Dresden print rooms. He was awarded a first-class gold medal at Munich in 1895 and a first-class silver medal in Paris in 1900.
MASTER THOMAS de Coloswar
first half of 15th century