Landscape: Creek and Rocks

Trained as an engraver, Asher B. Durand cut his artistic teeth on bank notes and prints based upon history paintings, such as John Trumbull's "Signing of the Declaration of Independence (Yale University Art Gallery). Encouraged by the positive reception of his prints, Durand took up oil painting. After attempting historical subjects, the artist settled into landscape painting, becoming a master of the genre. As president of the National Academy of Design from 1845 to 1861 and as a contributor to the journal "The Crayon," Durand helped legitimatize landscape painting for patrons and practitioners. The draftsmanship and precision of an engraver were skills that Durand carried into easel painting. They accorded well with his positive response to the work of John Ruskin, who began in 1840s England to advocate the close observation of the physical world. Durand also revered past art, particularly the balanced landscapes of Claude Lorrain. All Durand's talents are employed to exquisite effect in "Landscape: Creek and Rocks," a carefully wrought, finely executed vision of the natural world, sketched outside and then painstakingly completed in the studio. In this vision of nature composed into a harmonious whole, Durand triumphantly unified the American scene, using advanced European theory and art historical principles.