The Art Gallery at the Athenaeum contains one of America’s unique collections of 19th century American paintings. Each week we will feature a different work on this page. We hope educators will use this link as a tool to enrich their art curriculum. Vermonters and other citizens throughout the nation can now visit our gallery in this new, intimate, and informative way.
The text describing each painting was written by Mark D. Mitchell, Assistant Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the National Academy Museum. The digital images were prepared by Robert Jenks of Jenks Studio of Photography in St. Johnsbury, VT.
Please note that the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum prohibits the use of images from its collection in public exhibition, broadcast, electronic reproduction or publication in any form without prior written permission from the institution. If you would like to reproduce any of the Art Gallery images in any form, contact Irwin Gelber at 748-8291, extension 307.
Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), American
Landscape with Rocks, 1859
OIL ON CANVAS, 20½ x 15 ½ inches
Gift of Horace Fairbanks
Asher B. Durand was a pillar of American art during the mid-nineteenth century. His influence upon the direction of American landscape painting is difficult to overestimate, as he became its leader after the early death of Thomas Cole in 1848, Durand codified the principles of landscape painting for the second generation of painters of the Hudson River School in a series of letters published in the influential journal The Crayon in 1855. Landscape with Rocks is one of the earliest paintings in the Athenaeum's collection. Its inclusion shows Fairbanks' awareness of the history of American landscape painting before the Civil War.
Landscape with Rocks represents one of the two main subjects for which Durand became best known: the forest interior and the expansive vista. The relatively loose paint handling in Landscape with Rocks has suggested to scholar David Lawall that the composition is one of the artist's "studies from nature," of which Durand painted a considerable number during the 18503. The "studies" are characterized by an immediate response to a site, rather than a reconstituted studio composition created after the fact. Lawall has also written that the scene shown here likely depicts the landscape around Geneseo, New York, near Rochester.