Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape

This major new volume revisits for the first time in 30 years the world and the works of Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), one of 19th-century America’s most important artists. Durand was a central figure, both as an artist and as the major spokesman for the American landscape school, and was the acknowledged dean of American landscape painting from his election as president of the National Academy of Design in 1845 until his death at the age of ninety.

This survey reproduces works from every aspect of Durand's long career as an engraver, portrait painter and landscape artist, including the iconic Kindred Spirits (1849) and The First Harvest in the Wilderness (1855), as well as numerous photographs and comparative images. It includes an illustrated biographical chronology and an appendix of Durand’s “Letters on Landscape Painting,” published in their entirety for the first time since their original publication in the Crayon in 1855.