Musidora
Musidora c1825 by American Painter Asher Brown Durand (1796 – 1886); who was part of the Romanticism Art Movement and was a graduate of the Hudson River School. Asers hovedfokus var på landskabsmalerier.
Dette er en beautiful nude portrait engraving of a young woman in a lush forest that has removed all of her outer garments, which included her hat, scarf, and dress.
She is partially covered by sheer garment that is falling off her right shoulder and that is covering the front of her waist and right leg as it falls to the floor; and that she is holding in place on the front of her waist with her left hand.
She has laid her cloths at the base of a tree that is not to far behind her as she looks off into the distant sky that is illuminating her, as she is positioned slightly turned to her left; while she leans on a medium sized boulder with the palm of her right hand that is by an embankment of a large pond.
By the embankment are an assortment of flowers and plants, as well as smaller trees; and in the distance is a dense concentration of tress, and water flowing to an arched opening in the trees where we can see light illuminating the area.
Musidora af Asher B. Durand is a remastered digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image that is available for purchase online as a rolled canvas art print.
Info nedenfor fra Wikipedia.org
Durand was born in and died in Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village). He was the eighth of eleven children, and his father was a watchmaker and a silversmith.
Durand was apprenticed to an engraver from 1812 til 1817 and later entered into a partnership with the owner of the company, Charles Cushing Wright (1796 – 1854), who asked him to manage the company’s New York office.
He engraved the Declaration of Independence for John Trumbull during 1823, which established Durand’s reputation as one of the country’s finest engravers.
Durand helped organize the New York Drawing Association during 1825, which would become the National Academy of Design; he would serve the organization as president from 1845 til 1861.
Asers graveringer på pengesedler blev brugt som portrætter til Amerikas første frimærker, det 1847 serie. Sammen med sin bror Cyrus indgraverede han også nogle af de efterfølgende 1851 problemer.
Hans største interesse ændrede sig fra gravering til oliemaleri om 1830 med opmuntring fra sin protektor, Luman Reed. I løbet af 1837, han fulgte med sin ven Thomas Cole på en skitseekspedition til Schroon Lake i Adirondacks Mountains og kort tid efter begyndte han at koncentrere sig om landskabsmaleri.
Han brugte somre på at tegne i Catskills, Adirondacks, og de hvide bjerge i New Hampshire, lave hundredvis af tegninger og olieskitser, der senere blev indarbejdet i færdige akademistykker, som hjalp med at definere Hudson River School.
Durand huskes især for sine detaljerede skildringer af træer, klipper, og løv. Han var fortaler for at trække direkte fra naturen med så meget realisme som muligt. Durand skrev, “Lade [kunstneren] acceptere omhyggeligt hvad som helst [natur] præsenterer ham, indtil han skal, 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, og som en gave til Bryant.