Part 1: Durand on Location

(This is part one of a series on the American landscape pioneer Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)   based on an article I wrote for Plein Air magazine in April, 2005.) 

In June of 1837, Asher B. Durand and his friend Thomas Cole departed on a sketching trip to Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks of New York State. They had carefully planned for the excursion, packing camp stools, umbrellas, and easels, and assembling a list of oil colors that included Antwerp Blue, Mummy Brown, and Asphaltum.

Collapsible tin paint tubes had not yet been invented, so they had to decide whether to grind pigments on location or to transport prepared paint in small pigskin bladders, which were prone to breaking open or drying out.1 They brought along provisions of sour bread, salt pork, and ham, supplemented with fresh trout caught along the way.

The Schroon Lake expedition was a turning point for Durand, for it shaped his resolution to leave successful careers in engraving and portrait painting and to concentrate exclusively on landscape painting. Cole was already established as America’s premier landscape artist and had made some early experiments with plein-air work. But it was Durand who became the most enthusiastic early champion of painting from nature in oil.

According to fellow artist Daniel Huntington, Durand “was a pioneer in painting carefully finished studies directly from nature out-of-doors.”2 Other early landscape artists of his day—including Cole— “made only pencil drawings, or, at most, slight watercolor memoranda of the scenes they intended to paint, aiding the memory by writing on the drawing hints of color and effect.” Cole believed that “time [should] draw a veil of memory” over the common details of a scene in order to achieve a poetic sensibility in a painting.

Durand, following the earlier example of Constable and Corot, became deeply engaged by the challenge of working in oil outdoors in what he called “The School of Nature.” He went “directly to the fountain-head, and began the practice of faithful transcripts of ‘bits’ for use in his studio.” His custom was to spend two or three months each summer traveling with artist friends in the Catskills, Adirondacks, or White Mountains, gathering studies in both oil and pencil that would be used as aids to the memory when developing finished compositions during the winters in his New Jersey studio.

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1. Eleanor Harvey, The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature, 1830-1880, (New York: Harry N. Abrades, 1998), 33.

2. Daniel Huntington, Asher B. Durand, a Memorial Address by Daniel Huntington. New York: The Century Association, 1887.

Tomorrow: Part 2: Durand's America

Plein Air magazine

Best books on this topic: The Painted Sketch: American Impressions From Nature 1830-1880

The American Landscapes of Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)

Wikipedia on Durand