American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Provenance:

Private Collection, Florida.

Altman/Burke Fine Art, New York, New York, c. 1989.

Private Collection, Concord, New Hampshire, November 1990-2013.

Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York.

Acquired directly from the above, 2013.

Private Collection, Massachusetts.

Exhibited:

New York, Altman/Burke Fine Art, "The American Landscape: Paintings of the Hudson River School and Related Works," November 30, 1989 – January 16, 1990, p. 15, illustrated.

Boston, Vose Galleries, "Forging a National Identity: 19th Century American Paintings, Featuring the Collection of Matthew S. and Helen M. Mickiewicz," May 19 – June 30, 2012, pp. 2; 9, illustrated.

Lot Note:

Asher Brown Durand’s View of Dover Plains encapsulates the Arcadian qualities of American landscape painting at the dawn of the Civil War, an effort to bolster the nation’s conception of itself as a virgin land full promise. Durand, arguably the father figure of the Hudson River School, used images of boundless wilderness and rustic scenery as the pristine backdrop against which to draw the national narrative in pictorial terms, emphasizing the grandeur, both geographical and spiritual, of the New World.

The Dover Plains were a recurring subject for Durand, their sweeping vistas an endless source of inspiration. He rendered the land’s topographic features in intricate detail, according to his deeply held belief that a landscape should be drawn directly from nature with realism and accuracy. Here, Durand fashioned the scene around a lofty off-centered oak towering over a pasture with grazing cows. From the tree, the eye wanders down the sloped pasture to the river flowing towards the layered horizon, the valley and mountains stretching in the distance beneath a sliver of the golden sunset and an airy sea of clouds above.