Provenance

Richard and Jane Manoogian Foundation

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A flatboat with eight light-skinned men floats toward us down a wide river in this horizontal painting. The boat nearly spans the width of the composition and has low sides and a shallowly arched, low cabin upon which the men gather. At the center, a man with dark hair and wearing light blue trousers and a pink shirt dances with one foot and both arms raised. To our right a seated musician plays a fiddle, and to our left a smiling man holds up a metal pot and strikes the flat bottom with the back of his fingers. The remaining men sit or recline around the musicians and dancing man, some looking toward the dancer and two looking out at us. Bedrolls and animal skins are stored in the cabin below. The olive-green surface of the river is streaked with pale blue. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The trees and riverbanks in the distance are hazy beneath a watery blue sky.
George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2015.18.1

The Jolly Flatboatmen

George Caleb Bingham · 1846 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.18.1

We look sightly down and across a green meadow in front of us at a grove of tall trees to our left next to a shimmering body of water, before a deep view of distant mountains beneath an ice-blue sky in this horizontal landscape. A few slate-gray boulders and fallen tree trunks line the view along the bottom edge of the composition. To our left, tall, moss-green, leafy trees rise nearly the height of the canvas, shading a winding, dirt path that leads to building with white walls and a gray roof in the distance. A tower standing next to the structure suggests this could be a church. The land slopes gently to the water, perhaps a river, where five brown and white cows gather near the sand-colored shoreline at the lower center of the composition. Another pair of cows, one white and one chestnut brown, stand closer to us. The placid surface of the water reflects the pale blue of the sky and the soft green of the tree-covered hill across the river. The river winds under an arched bridge, into the distance to our left. Minuscule buildings and pointed spires dot the landscape that becomes hazy in the distance. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the canvas, and a few wispy, grayish clouds float across the light blue sky. The brushstrokes are blended and the palette dominated by earthy greens, browns, and watery blue, giving the landscape a soft appearance. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had written his name on a rock near the lower left corner: “ABDurand 1861.”
Asher Brown Durand, Pastoral Landscape, 1861, oil on canvas, Gift of The Manoogian Foundation, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.96.1

Pastoral Landscape

Asher Brown Durand · 1861 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1991.96.1