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 :. | Parish church,Stratford-upon-Avon,England | Lake Scene in the Mountains | Notch House,White Mountains,New Hampshire | Castle of Chillon | Sunday Morning |
Related Artists:
Amy Philip
1788-1865,is a British actress. She is best known for her role as Jessica Arnold in the BBC school drama, Grange Hill, which she acted between 1994 and 1998. In Grange Hill, Amy character was from a middle-class family and was sent to Grange Hill from an exclusive girls school when her father business fell on hard times. She quickly adapted to life at Grange Hill and won a firm following among male fans. In 1996, viewers saw the previously feisty Jessica become bedridden with chronic fatigue syndrome (or M.E. as the condition was then popularly known). Simcock appeared in just the first four episodes of the 1996 series, with Jessica sent to the USA to recuperate. Despite returning to Grange Hill as an integral part of the 1997 series, where Jessica would cause a stir as editor of the school magazine, Simcock appeared in just two episodes of the 1998 series, the explanation being that Jessica had left Grange Hill in favour of sixth form college. In September 1997, Simcock appeared in the CITV comedy drama Knight School as Lady Elizabeth de Gossard, having now changed her professional name to Amy Phillips. Post-Grange Hill, Phillips has continued to make regular occasional appearances in various TV shows, the most notable being as Beth Partridge in the BBC series Rescue Me. She has also appeared in the Hollywood movie The Freediver.
Antonio Maria Vassallo
Italian Baroque Era Painter, ca.1620-1670
Luis Ricardo Falero
Luis Ricardo Falero (1851 - December 7, 1896) was a Spanish painter. He specialized in female nudes and mythological and fantasy settings. Most of his paintings contained at least one female nude or topless nude. His most common medium was oil on canvas.