A Pastoral Scene

1858

Asher Brown Durand

Artist, American, 1796 - 1886

A placid river winds past low hills with cows to fields blanketed with trees leading back to mountains lining the horizon in this hazy, horizontal, landscape painting. The river curves in a tight backward C shape from the lower left corner of the composition. The right half of the foreground closest to us is made up of a gently sloping, grass-covered hill alongside the water. Four cows graze in the sunshine closer to the water, and the right portion is in deep shade under towering trees that nearly fill the right half of the composition. Logs, moss-covered boulders, stones, and plants line the bottom edge of the painting. Languid, golden light works across the treetops in the middle distance. The mountains along the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up this painting, are slate gray. The sky above is streaked with pale yellow near the horizon and deepens to pale blue along the top edge of the canvas. A few deeply shaded, ivory-yellow clouds float across the sky. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower center, “A B Durand 1858.”

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr.

  • Dimensions

    overall: 55.5 x 82.3 cm (21 7/8 x 32 3/8 in.)
    framed: 83.2 x 108.9 cm (32 3/4 x 42 7/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1978.6.3

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Frederick Sturges [d. 1917], New York, and Fairfield, Connecticut;[1] his son, Frederick Sturges, Jr. [1876-1977], New York, and Fairfield, Connecticut; bequest 1978 to NGA.
[1] Although family tradition held that all of the Durand paintings in the Sturges collection were first owned by Jonathan Sturges, no evidence supports that assumption for A Pastoral Scene. Even though the evidence is inconclusive, it is more likely that Jonathan's son, Frederick Sturges, Sr., purchased the painting from the artist in 1858. In June 1858 Frederic Sturges, Sr., wrote to the artist: "I beg to enclose my check for five hundred and fifty dollars and I would again thank you for my beautiful picture" (letter of 16 June 1858, Durand papers, New York Public Library, as quoted in David B. Lawall, Asher B. Durand: A Documentary Catalogue of the Narrative and Landscape Paintings, New York, 1978: 120). Lawall (letter of 14 April 1980 in NGA curatorial files) agrees that A Pastoral Scene may be the painting referred to in this letter, but notes that $550 would have been an appropriate price in 1858 for a painting measuring 30 by 40 inches, considerably larger than Pastoral Scene. Paintings by Durand of the size of the present example likely would have cost about $250 $300 in 1858 (see, for example, Lawall 1978, nos. 206 and 236), and even smaller pictures sold for about $100 (letter from Sturges to John Durand, 22 June 1858, John Durand papers, New York Public Library as quoted in a letter of 2 April 1982 from Wayne Craven in NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1998

  • Treasures of Light: Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, March-April 1998, no cat.

  • American Light: Selections from the National Gallery of Art, Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, May-August 1998, no cat.

Bibliography

1978

  • Lawall, David B. Asher B. Durand: A Documentary Catalogue of the Narrative and Landscape Paintings. New York and London, 1978: 120, possibly no. 225.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 147, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 113-114, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 162, repro.

  • Cushman, Helen Baker. The Mill on the Third River: A History of the Davey Company. Jersey City, New Jersey, 1992: 23, 24, repro.

1996

  • Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 142-144, repro.

Inscriptions

lower center: A B Durand / 1858

Wikidata ID

Q20188400

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