Landscape, Welch Mountain

Artist Asher B. Durand (American, 1796 - 1886)

Date1863

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 20 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (51.44 x 76.84 cm)
Framed: 29 5/8 x 39 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches (75.25 x 100.65 x 13.97 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number35-45

SignedSigned and dated lower left: AB Durand / 1863

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionLandscape with valley in foreground, river at right, and mountains in background.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

A. B. Durand, 1796–1886, Montclair Art Museum, N.J., October 24–November 28, 1971, no. 79 (as Landscape).

Nineteenth Century American Painting, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., February 17–March 31, 1974, no cat. (as Landscape).

19th-Century American Arts and Crafts: Selections from the Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Charles H. MacNider Museum, Mason City, Iowa, August 17–September 14, 1975, no cat.

Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., December 2, 1977–January 22, 1978, no. 44 (as Landscape).

Gallery Label

Asher B. Durand evoked the philosophical idea of the Beautiful in the harmony, serenity and loveliness of this pastoral landscape of Welch Mountain, New Hampshire. He achieved these qualities by depicting the foreground with a fine brush to give remarkable detail, rendering the middle ground more sketchily and incorporating a number of flat, broadly painted areas of soft lavenders and blues in the background. Bright light and shadow play across the entire view, which is enveloped in a hazy atmosphere.

A successful engraver, Durand did not turn to painting as a career until he was 40. After Thomas Cole's death in 1848, he became the acknowledged leader of the group of American landscape painters commonly called the Hudson River School.

Provenance

(Army and Navy Cooperative Supply, Ltd., London, by February 1890 until after August 1898);

(Conrad Hug Jr., Kansas City, Mo., by 1935);

to NAMA, 1935.

Published References

“For Summer Visitors to Loan Gallery,” Kansas City Journal, July 23, 1939, 14.

The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2^nd ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 166 (as Landscape).

Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 255 (as Landscape).

A. B. Durand, 1796–1886, exh. cat. (Montclair, N.J.: Montclair Art Museum, 1971), 66 (as Landscape).

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 251 (as Landscape).

Donald Hoffmann, “The ‘Truth’ in American Art,” Kansas City Star, February 24, 1974, 4E (as Landscape).

Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1977), 40 (as Landscape).

Ross E. Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1033, 1036 (as Landscape).

Catherine H. Campbell, New Hampshire Scenery: A Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Artists of New Hampshire Mountain Landscapes (Canaan: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1985), 53 (as Welch Mountain).

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 232–235, 2: 102–103.

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