Rocks and Trees, Forest Hillside

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Rocks and Trees, Forest Hillside

Artist Asher Brown Durand (American, 1796-1886)

Date188[5?]

DimensionsFrame: 33 × 45 7/8 × 3 1/4 in. (83.8 × 116.5 × 8.3 cm)
Canvas: 26 3/4 × 39 3/4 in. (67.9 × 101 cm)

MediumOil on paper, mounted on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePartial purchase from the Dorothy Chandler Fund for 19th century American Art, and partial gift in honor of William Hutton, TMA curator (1952-1965, 1971-1992) by his children

Object number

2016.212

Not on View

DescriptionMoss-covered boulders and an uprooted tree stump

Label TextExecuted on a large sheet of paper, likely on the spot at some location in the Catskill Mountains of New York, this intense oil study from life offered Asher B. Durand the opportunity to capture a specific locale in all its precise detail. Moss-covered boulders and an uprooted tree stump commanded the artist’s central attention. Backlit tree trunks occupy the top register, giving way to a glimpse of sky. Nonetheless, the scene focuses the viewer’s attention on the particulars—textures, colors, shapes—of a cropped, ‘photographic’ experience of nature. Durand is often referred to as the major 19th-century American landscape painter following the death in 1848 of his close friend Thomas Cole, whose painting The Architect’s Dream is one of the gems of the Museum’s collection. In 1840–41 Durand embarked on a European tour, but he would write home: “When all this looking and studying and admiring shall have an end, I am free to confess that…for real unalloyed enjoyment of scenery, the rocks, trees, and green meadows of Hoboken [New Jersey] will have a charm that all Switzerland cannot boast.”