Landscape

This work by the "dean" of Hudson River School painting, Asher B. Durand, illustrates the important influence that he exerted on his contemporaries. Durand enjoyed virtually undisputed preeminence in American art during mid-century and became an important mentor for the generation of American landscapists who followed in the path blazed by Thomas Cole, N.A. (1801-1848) from 1825 until his early death. Durand's "Landscape," painted just two years after Cole's death, depicts two artists resting amid a scene that strongly suggests an idealized version of the landscape of the upper Hudson looking south to the Catskill Mountains.