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 :. | Landscape (Birch and Oaks) | Pitch Pines,North Mountain Catskills | Jonathan Sturges | Portrait of the Artist-s Wife and her sister | Mount Chocorua,Hew Hampshire |
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Henry Lejeune
(12 December 1819 - 5 October 1904) was an English painter of landscapes, genre, literary and biblical scenes. He became well-known for his genre paintings of children. Henry Le Jeune was born in London, the son of Anthony Le Jeune, a professional musician of Flemish origin, and the third of five children. After showing an early interest in art he was encouraged by his family to study the art collections in the British Museum. In 1834 Le Jeune was admitted to the Royal Academy where, after winning 4 silver medals in succession, he won a gold medal in 1841 for the biblical painting "Samson Bursting his Bonds". He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840 with a work entitled "Joseph Interpreting the Dream of Pharaoh's Chief Butler". From 1845-48 he taught at the Government School of design at Somerset House, and from 1848-64 was curator and instructor at the Royal Academy. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1863 and an honorary retired associate in 1886. Le Jeune married Dorothy Lewis (1815-1864) on 21 June 1844 and had five sons and three daughters. He lived in London all his life, dying in Hampstead in 1904.
Maler, Hans
Austrian, Active 1500-29
Eleanor e.manly
fl.1875-1898