Book Description
This major new volume revisits for the first time in over thirty years the world and the works of Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), one of the most important American artists of the nineteenth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Fine But Unspectacular Overview
I had been hoping for a comprehensive volume on Durand for years. There are almost always 3 or 4 of his works included in most anthologies of American art of the 19th century and certainly any that focus on the Hudson River School. All acknowledge his importance and I have long admired his majestic forestscapes.

This volume is a comprehensive and historical analysis of his life, art and times. It does disappoint to some degree, due to the inclusion of the numerous portrait paintings of his early career. These are skillful but quite dull in comparison to his landscapes. His brief foray into genre is lackluster as well. This results in a book that really only gains it's raison d' etre at the halfway point. Then it is very enjoyable and gives us what we hoped for; good reproductions of his forest scenes and other landscapes. Like Fredrick Church, he brought a new level of realism and scientific study to the landscape, while still imbuing it with the exalted romanticism that connoted a spiritual essence.

I would have liked more focus on his major works, larger plates or more details and less historical context in this book, but it is still the best existing single source on this important artist.

outstanding and influential early American painter
President of the National Academy of Design from 1845 until his death in 1886, Asher Durand had a major influence on American painting in its early, formative years. Durand's influence with his paintings and his writings and work with other can been as second only to Thomas Cole, who was at different times both mentor and competitor to Durand in his long career. Though Cole has the higher reputation, Durand went further in defining the genre of nature painting in this early era, including the Hudson River School, and articulating and exploring its principles, sources, and aims in his writings. A series of nine essays Durand wrote in 1855 for the art journal Crayon: A Journal Devoted to the Graphic Arts, and the Literature Related to Them" are reprinted in the appendix.

One hundred color illustrations of Durand paintings along with more than 80 black-and-white pictures testify to Durand's exceptional touch melding realism and idealism in the nature painting of the first generation of American painters after the United States became an independent nation. "Kindred Spirits," the book's title, is taken from a familiar 1849 Durand painting of the writer William Cullen Bryant and painter Thomas Cole standing on a rock ledge overlooking a valley with a stream running down it. Not only are the two men meant to be seen as kindred spirits representing the brotherly-like love in the new nation, but the two men are meant as well to be seen as kindred spirits with the nature world spreading out around them like an ampitheater. An 1855 painting titled "The First Harvest in the Wilderness" pictures a man working in a field of golden corn or wheat with misty mountains rising around him. In the background is a log cabin with a woman working at something by its doorway. No matter what the subject and scene of a Durand painting, it bathes in an Edenic glow implying being chosen as one of Providence's favorites and boundless promise.

Mostly before he came to the nature painting, Durand did prints, engravings, and drawings too. Forty of these are pictured. "Kindred Spirits" is a full, authoritative study of the life, career, art work, and influence of this leading early-1800's American artist concentrating on his nature paintings. ... Read more

Product Description
Perhaps best known as the painter of Kindred Spirits, the quintessential Hudson River School painting, Asher B. Durand (1796 to 1886) was one of the most important American artists of the nineteenth century, a central figure as an artist, as a founder of art institutions, and as the acknowledged leader of the American landscape school from his election as president of the National Academy of Design in 1845 until his death at the age of ninety. Durand's six-decade career spanned the period from the earliest efforts of artists and writers to construct a national cultural identity on through the mid-century triumph and, later, the eclipse of what is now known as the Hudson River School. In this biography first published in 1894, Durand's son John reconstructed the artist's life from family records and documents and his own recollections, creating what has become an essential source of biographical data on Durand, his paintings, his engravings, and his patrons. This edition features a new introduction by Linda S. Ferber, vice president and museum director for the New York Historical Society. ... Read more

Book Description
Despite its widespread popularity in antebellum America, phrenology has rarely been taken seriously as a cultural phenomenon. Charles Colbert seeks to redress this neglect by demonstrating the important contributions the theory made to artistic developments in the period. He goes on to reveal the links between the tenets of phrenology and the cultural ideals of Jacksonian democracy.

As Colbert demonstrates, virtually every important figure of the American Renaissance expressed some opinion of phrenology, whether or not they embraced it. Its proponents included many artists eager to support a cause that enhanced the status of their profession by endowing the human form with extraordinary significance.

Colbert reviews the careers of Hiram Powers, William Sidney Mount, Harriet Hosmer, Asher B. Durand, and Thomas Cole, among others, in light of their responses to phrenology. Powers's Greek Slave, for example, can be seen as a model of the physical and moral perfection available to those who adopted the phrenological program, a series of dictates on everything from diet to mental and physical exercise. By creating portraits, genre scenes, ideal figures, and even landscapes that embodied the theory's teachings, Colbert shows, artists endeavored to enlist their audience in a crusade that would transform the nation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An original view on 19th century American Art
Written by Charles Colbert, who teaches in the Fine Arts Department of Boston College, this work is the most recent scholarly contribution concerning the cultural influences of Phrenology. The author demonstratesthe contributions of Phrenology to artistic impression, particularly in19th century American art. Painters and sculptors such as Hiram Powers,William Sidney Mount, Harriet Hosmer, Asher B. Durand, and Thomas Cole,among others, see their works reviewed and phrenologically analysed. Thework gives a good insight in the world of American art, much of which isvirtually unknown in the Old World. 

An original view on 19th century American Art
Written by Charles Colbert, who teaches in the Fine Arts Department of Boston College, this work is the most recent scholarly contribution concerning the cultural influences of Phrenology. The author demonstratesthe contributions of Phrenology to artistic impression, particularly in19th century American art. Painters and sculptors such as Hiram Powers,William Sidney Mount, Harriet Hosmer, Asher B. Durand, and Thomas Cole,among others, see their works reviewed and phrenologically analysed. Thework gives a good insight in the world of American art, much of which isvirtually unknown in the Old World.  ... Read more