The Stranded Ship

1844

Asher Brown Durand

Painter, American, 1796 - 1886

A large, dark sailing ship to our left is stranded near the shore, angled dramatically away from us, in choppy waves under a periwinkle-blue sky streaked with gray and copper-colored clouds in this horizontal painting. Two tall masts on the ship angle steeply away, showing that the boat nearly lies on its side. The third mast is broken. The rigging is askew and the sails are tattered. Light catches a steel-blue band around the deck. Broken pieces of masts, swaths of limp, gray sails, thick rope, and a wooden barrel on its side are scattered along the beach in front of us. Bottle-green waves break gently on the beach, but white foam kicks up around the hull. Low, bronze-brown rocks jut outwards from the beach to our left. To our right, a pale, yellow sun glows hazily just over the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the canvas. The dark gray clouds brighten to pale yellow, lavender purple, and mauve pink along the edges and near the sun. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had inscribed a board lying in the shadow cast by the barrel in the lower right corner: “A.B.Durand 1884.”

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 64

Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Commissioned 1844 by Henry S. Mulligan;[1] possibly sold to James Brown [1791-1877], New York.[2] Private collection; (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York); sold 19 May 2003 to NGA.
[1] A letter of 2 April 1844 from Henry S. Mulligan to Asher B. Durand reads in part: "I enclose my check for three hundred and fifty dollars, the price of your beautiful painting of "the stranded ship" now adorning a room at my house. Allow me here to express the entire satisfaction with which myself and family regard it, and the great pleasure I take in subscribing myself the friend of the gifted Artist." (A.B. Durand Papers, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library; quoted in David B. Lawall, Asher B. Durand: A Documentary Catalogue of the Narrative and Landscape Paintings, New York and London, 1978: 44, no. 90.)
[2] Lawall 1978: 45, no. 91. A list of some of Durand's principal works, published in an 1854 article, includes "The Stranded Ship, in possession of James Brown, N.Y." (E. Anna Lewis, "Art and Artists of America. Asher Brown Durand," Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art XLV, no. 4 (October 1854): 321).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1844

  • Exhibition of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, National Academy of Design), New York, 1844, no. 42.

2007

  • Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape, Brooklyn Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; San Diego Museum of Art, 2007-2008, pl. 43.

Bibliography

1854

  • Lewis, E. Anna. "Art and Artists of America. Asher Brown Durand." Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art XLV, no. 4 (October 1854): 321.

1894

  • Durand, John. The Life and Times of A.B. Durand. New York, 1894: 135 (possibly the same painting).

1978

  • Lawall, David B. Asher B. Durand: A Documentary Catalogue of the Narrative and Landscape Paintings. New York and London, 1978: 44, no. 90.

1988

  • Kelly, Franklin. Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape. Washington, D.C. and London, 1988: 63-64.

Inscriptions

lower right on board: A.B.Durand 1844

Wikidata ID

Q20187181

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