In Plein View

Sight

ASHER B. DURAND’S Kindred Spirits hung in the New York Public Library for more than a century without fanfare. The American masterpiece is considered to be a defining work of the Hudson River School, a movement that reflected a reverence for nature and the transcendentalist thinking of the 19th century. The world was reawakened to its significance two years ago, when Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton claimed Kindred Spirits at a Sotheby’s auction for a record-breaking $35 million.

San Diegans will have a chance to see the painting, on loan through the Walton Family Foundation, when “Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape,” a collection of more than 50 of the artist’s paintings, makes its last tour stop at the San Diego Museum of Art, February 2 through April 27.

“Kindred Spirits is a painting that has had a lot of commotion about it in recent months,” says D. Scott Atkinson, the museum’s curator of American art and chief curator. “I’m excited about the show coming to San Diego from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It’s a once-in-a-career opportunity.”

The iconic masterpiece depicts artist Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant at the edge of a high cliff, overlooking a waterfall and dwarfed by tall trees and the distant Catskill Mountains. Cole, widely considered the founder of the Hudson River School of painting, died of pneumonia in 1848. In appreciation of Bryant’s eulogy, a collector commissioned Durand to paint a work that paid tribute to the friendship between Cole and Bryant. Kindred Spirits remained in the Bryant family until 1904, when Bryant’s daughter Julia donated it to the New York Public Library.

When Walton outbid the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art for Kindred Spirits, it caused uproar. Many art lovers felt the Met should have made a stronger effort to purchase the work. Some argued that the library should not have sold the painting at a closed-bid auction.

“It’s a sad thing from the museum curator’s point of view, because as these works are suddenly worth millions in incremental jumps, it makes them so far out of our reach that we can only wave goodbye,” says Atkinson. “You also have to be concerned because there isn’t the environment of philanthropy. There was once an understanding about community responsibility, but multimillionaires don’t necessarily see that works find their way back into the museum world.”

The Hudson River School movement impacted three generations of artists, intent on capturing the majesty and abundance of America’s natural resources. Its painters shared a passion for panoramic landscapes and the vertical forest interiors of the Hudson River Valley and surrounding areas.

Durand was originally an engraver, then a portrait painter, before creating the detailed scenery he is now famous for. “He sees the emergence of the landscape tradition, and he is part of its creation in the United States,” says Atkinson. “The writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and transcendentalist thought became a part of Durand’s thinking, and establishing the core of American art was very much on the minds of Hudson River School painters. And when it comes right down to it, what was America but its landscapes?”

SDMA’s own work by Durand, Landscape——Composition: In the Catskills, reframed for the exhibition, is featured in the show. The museum has also organized an exhibit of California plein-air paintings with Lux Art Institute in Encinitas. “Plein Air Past and Present: A Collaboration Between SDMA and the Lux Art Institute” includes nearly 40 paintings and runs concurrently with the “Kindred Spirits” display.

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