Asher B. Durand Asher B. Durand was born in Jefferson, New Jersey in 1796 and he died in South Orange, New Jersey in 1886. He first learned to engrave in his father's watch making shop and in 1812 he apprenticed with the Newark engraver Peter Maverick in Jefferson Village, N.J. (now Maplewood) and became Maverick's partner in 1817 in an engraving shop named Maverick and Durand. After Durand completed a large engraving commission for John Trumbell of the Declaration of Independence in 1820, he became famous in America for his pure line and ability to draw accurately and within a year he was dubbed “the most famous engraver in America” and set up his own shop in New York City. In 1825 his Musidora became one of the most important plates of the period and he became renown for his incredibly accurate portrait drawings and engravings. During that year he was a bank engraver with his brother Cyrus Durand. He was a charter member of the National Academy of Design in New York City and its president from 1845-1861. Although he painted many prominent citizens' portraits he became world renown for his Hudson River School landscapes. He is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Academy of Design, Worcester Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and in most leading American museums. After having an extremely successful career as an engraver, in 1830 Asher B. Durand produced several engraved plates for the magazine The American Landscape to accompany a text by William Cullen Bryant, but when only one issue of the magazine was published Durand left engraving. In 1831 Durand decided to dedicate his life to painting landscapes and genre scenes in oil. Within a few years he became as famous a landscape painter as he had been an engraver. It was during the 1830s Durand and the established, famous landscape painter Thomas Cole befriended one another. After painting together in the Catskills and along the Hudson, Durand's early canvases were highly influenced by Cole's allegorical, imaginary subjects with moralistic themes. In Knickerbocker Magazine (July 1840), a reviewer wrote, “…we predict that Mr. Cole will sooner encounter him (Durand) as a rival than any other artist now among us.” In that year, Durand's imaginary landscape paintings Evening of Life and Morning of Life (National Academy of Design collection) drew huge crowds and exuberant admiration. From 1840-1841, Durand went abroad with John W. Casilear, Thomas P. Rossiter and John F. Kensett. By this time, he had painted landscapes reminiscent of Thomas Cole's moralistic observations of nature, but Durand's canvases were fresher in spirit and more accurate to nature, and Durand's works had become more highly influenced by the landscape style of the 17th century French artist Claude Lorrain. After Thomas Cole's death in 1848, Durand was acknowledged and applauded as the finest and most preeminent landscape painter in America. To honor Durand's growing, prestigious reputation Durand was elected president of the National Academy. In 1855, Durand wrote nine letters on landscape painting that were published in The Crayon and artists flocked to study with the master and patrons were eager to purchase his work. Durand's commonly painted flat ground planes are designed with trees on either side of center and figures,houses, a distance lake and cattle in the foreground arranged with spatial recession that is logical and reasonable. Men and nature are balanced within luminous atmosphere and each is given dignity and respect. Man and animals do not overpower or hinder the overall resplendence of the landscape, rather they are a natural part of the entirety. Like most of the Hudson River masters, Durand found in an natural country setting a spirituality. Durand's reverence for the landscape grew out his belief that “the representation of the work of God in the visible creation [is] independent of man.” Nature was a visible manifestation of the Deity and represented itself. The devoutly religious Durand did not want to add or take away from what was the natural setting. As with many Hudson River School painters, Durand only allowed his imagination to enter his work if it idealized the real or which made more beautiful a landscape's flora and fauna. Wanting to show his optimism toward nature and the goodness of earth's riches, Durand felt nature gave people models for ethical conduct. Typical of his work are the New York Historical Society's Sunset, 1838 or Boston's Museum of Fine Art's View in the Catskill, 1844, in which a warm, glowing sun shimmers to show man and nature in harmony with summer foliage. By the late 1840s, Durand's work was not as composed and the artist confronted nature more directly and wilderness scenes often replaced rural settings. By the 1870s, his luminous, harmonious scenes of nature invited the viewer to contemplate the grandeur, beauty and solace found in nature. By the 1870's, Durand mastered how to paint tonal colors that suggested far reaches of landscape space. He carefully graduated atmospheric perspectives and was subtle at displaying light and shadow within a densely forested landscape. His overall objective was to have a viewer attain a spiritual and moral elevation while looking at his work. In 1895, the Grolier Club of New York published a check-list of the engraved work of Asher B. Durand and his brother John wrote his biography. Among his most famous portraits are those of Edward Everett, Governor Kemble, Christian Gobrecht and other prominent politicians and businessmen. The New York Historical Society has a set of the early Presidents painted by Durand done from originals by Gilbert Stuart. Most art critics and historians dub Durand The Father of American Landscape Painting (see Fielding's, p. 103, 1927) because Durand was one of the first to develop American landscape painting that was different from the dramatic or overtly allegorical style of Thomas Cole (whose work often takes on religious, moral or philosophical messages). Durand's paintings were contemplative and quietly interpretive. As David B. Lawall observed in A.B. Durand, 1796-1886 (1978), for Durand landscape painting was a moral exercise and he through it he sought awareness and perfection. Most of Durand's subjects were found in the Catskills and the White Mountains or in the river and pasture lands of the northeastern United States. Although his paintings are from real settings he often infused them with romantic or poetic sentiments, but the majority of his work tells of the American experience and feelings of the Hudson River School. Knickerbocker Magazine (July 1853) and Literary World (April 30, 1853) critiqued that “Durand is always peaceful, quiet, picturesque and beautiful. No one artist among us had done more for true art than Durand. He woos us by their gentleness and repose, to love his pictures, rather than by attempting to 'astonish' us, and to enforce our admiration [as Cole had done].” Some critics praised Durand's work as giving hope to the pioneers” (Knickerbocker Magazine, January 1856) because each embellished the glorious, magnificent, peaceful aspects of the American countryside and there was no hint of hostility in any of his canvases. Durand's paintings uplift the essence of the natural environment and agriculture. After 1855, Durand never painted imaginary landscapes. He preferred painting wooded glades and far-reaching valleys and his views dominated American landscape painting as exemplary in the mid-nineteenth century. He painting until his death in New York in 1858. Asher B. Durand is known throughout the art world as The Father of American Landscape Painting and is revered as the finest realistic landscape painter from the Hudson River School. His rare work is sought after worldwide and oil canvases by this American master are primarily in museum collections and are exceedingly difficult to purchase.

Biography with permission from AskArt.com

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