Kindred Spirits
Kindred Spirits c1849 by American Painter & Engraver Asher Brown Durand (1796 – 1886) was part of the Romanticism Art Movement and was a graduate of the Hudson River School. Asher’s main focus was on Paisaia margoak.
Kindred Spirits depicts mutual friends American Painter Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848) with American Poet William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878) taking in the scenery of a gorge in the Catskills. The painting was commissioned from Asher Brown Durand (1796 – 1886) by the merchant-collector Jonathan Sturges (1802 – 1874); who gifted it to William Cullen Bryant in gratitude for the nature poet’s eulogy to Thomas Cole (Jonathan Sturges mentor), who died unexpectedly on February 11, 1848.
Side Note: If you look carefully you can see the names of Bryant and Cole carved into the tree.
Hau sarean eros daitekeen domeinu publikoko irudi baten arte digitalaren erreprodukzioa da ijetzitako mihise inprimatua.
Beheko informazioa Wikipedia.org
Durand urtean jaio zen eta azkenean Maplewood-en hil zen, New Jersey (orduan Jefferson Village deitua). Hamaika umeetatik zortzigarrena izan zen. Duranden aita erlojugilea eta zilargilea zen.
Durand grabatzaile baten aprendiz izan zen 1812 to 1817 eta geroago enpresaren jabearekin lankidetza bat egin zuen, Charles Cushing Wright (1796–1854), konpainiaren New Yorkeko bulegoa kudeatzeko eskatu zion.
John Trumbull-i Independentzia Adierazpena grabatu zuen bitartean 1823, horrek Durand-en ospea ezarri zuen herrialdeko grabatzaile onenetako bat bezala.
Durandek New York Drawing Association antolatzen lagundu zuen 1825, which would become the National Academy of Design; he would serve the organization as president from 1845 to 1861.
Asher’s engravings on bank notes were used as the portraits for America’s first postage stamps, du 1847 seriea. Along with his brother Cyrus he also engraved some of the succeeding 1851 issues.
His main interest changed from engraving to oil painting about 1830 with the encouragement of his patron, Luman Reed. During 1837, he accompanied his friend Thomas Cole on a sketching expedition to Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks Mountains 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 remembered particularly for his detailed portrayals of trees, arroka, and foliage. He was an advocate for drawing directly from nature with as much realism as possible. Durand wrote, “Let [artista] scrupulously accept whatever [izadi] 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 opinions on art in his essay “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 Mountains landscape. This was painted as a tribute to Cole upon Cole’s death during 1848, and as a gift to Bryant.