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 | Portrait of Isaac Edrebi of Morocco | Dance of the Haymakers | Clearing Up | On Schroom river looking Northwest |
Related Artists:
Bazille, Frdric
Studied under Charles Gleyre. French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1870
Martinus Rorbye
(17 May 1803 - 29 August 1848) was a Danish painter, known both for genre works and landscapes. He was a central figure of the Golden Age of Danish painting during the first half of the 19th century. The most traveled of the Danish Golden Age painters, he traveled both north to Norway and Sweden and south to Italy, Greece and Constantinople. He was also the first Danish painter to take to painting in Skagen at the northern top of Jutland, almost half a century before the thriving community of Skagen Painters formed and came to fame. Martinus Rørbye was born in Drammen in Norway to Danish parents Ferdinand Henrik Rørbye and his wife Frederikke Eleonore Catherine de Stockfleth. His father was a warehouse manager and later Superintendent of War, and had moved the family to Norway shortly before Martinus' birth. The family returned to Denmark when Martinus was 12 years old, shortly after the cession of Norway from Denmark in 1814. Martinus was not inclined to schooling, but in 1820 started his studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts at 17 years of age. He studied under Christian August Lorentzen and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, a strong influence on a generation of artists during the Danish Golden Age. Rørbye was a favorite student of Eckersberg, and they formed a close association. He took to Eckersberges careful attention to nature and his strivings to capture details realistically. He was also greatly influenced by Lorentzenes use of color. He won the Academyes small silver medal in 1824, and the large silver medal in 1828. He competed for the gold medal and won a cash prize. In 1829 he won the small gold medal for his painting Christ healing the blind, which remains in the ownership of the Royal Danish Academy. He never won the large gold medal in spite of repeated attempts.
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini
Italian Baroque sculptor, painter and architect.1598-1680 was a pre-eminent Baroque sculptor and architect of 17th Century Rome. Bernini was born in Naples to a Mannerist sculptor, Pietro Bernini, originally from Florence. At the age of seven he accompanied his father to Rome, where his father was involved in several high profile projects. There as a boy, his skill was soon noticed by the painter Annibale Carracci and by Pope Paul V, and Bernini gained the patronage exclusively under Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the pope's nephew.