THE TRUTH AND FEELING OF DURAND’S ART
ASHER B. DURAND
Asher B. Durand, on the contrary, was of sturdy Huguenot stock, one of the many children of a farmer who cultivated his land on Orange Mountain, but whose ingenuity made him also a watchmaker, silversmith, and skilled mechanic generally. His son, after some boyish efforts at engraving, was apprenticed to that trade, and rapidly became by far the best engraver in the country, both prosperous and skilful. His masterpiece is the “Declaration of Independence,” which holds its own today as a most creditable production. He was still an engraver when Cole came to New York, and was one of the first to encourage him and buy his pictures. At this time Durand, though an older man by some five years than Cole, had not yet begun to paint. When he did some ten years later, in 1835, his first productions were portrait heads admirable in their delicate draftsmanship and sure, fine characterization; but he soon abandoned these for landscape, and for the latter part of his long life devoted himself entirely to it.
IN THE WOODS, BY ASHER B. DURAND
Durand’s landscapes, like his portraits, showed his training as an engraver in their accurate and minute drawing. Contrary to the general practice of the time, he painted many of his large canvases out of doors in face of nature. His love for nature, combined with his training as an engraver, probably accounts for his almost invariable choice of full midsummer daylight for his pictures, when vegetation was at its fullest and all its details could be minutely seen. Yet, for all his love of detail, he does not lose unity, and the color is true to the soft, warm haze of summer, and the shadows keep their local atmosphere.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
A GLIMPSE OF THE SEA, BY A. H. WYANT