Art

Item Description

Each of these gorgeous art books features the works of one of the three Hudson River School greats: Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Frederic Edwin Church. 

Picturesque and Sublime: Thomas Cole's Trans-Atlantic Inheritance 

by Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, and Jennifer Raab 

Description:

Landscape art in the early 19th century was guided by two rival concepts: the picturesque, which emphasized touristic pleasures and visual delight, and the sublime, an aesthetic category rooted in notions of fear and danger. British artists including J.M.W. Turner and John Constable raised landscape painting to new heights and their work reached global audiences through the circulation of engravings. Thomas Cole, born in England, emigrated to the United States in 1818, and first absorbed the picturesque and sublime through print media. Cole transformed British and continental European traditions to create a distinctive American form of landscape painting. The authors here explore the role of prints as agents of artistic transmission and look closely at how Cole’s own creative process was driven by works on paper such as drawings, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts. Also considered is the importance of the parallel works of William Guy Wall, best known for his pioneering Hudson River Portfolio. Beautifully illustrated with works on paper ranging from watercolors to etchings, mezzotints, aquatints, engravings, and lithographs, as well as notable paintings, this book offers important insights into Cole’s formulation of a profound new category in art—the American sublime

Condition: Softcover, New in Plastic 

Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape

by Linda S. Ferber

Description:

This major new volume revisits for the first time in 30 years the world and the works of Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), one of 19th-century America’s most important artists. Durand was a central figure, both as an artist and as the major spokesman for the American landscape school, and was the acknowledged dean of American landscape painting from his election as president of the National Academy of Design in 1845 until his death at the age of ninety.

This survey reproduces works from every aspect of Durand's long career as an engraver, portrait painter and landscape artist, including the iconic Kindred Spirits (1849) and The First Harvest in the Wilderness (1855), as well as numerous photographs and comparative images. It includes an illustrated biographical chronology and an appendix of Durand’s “Letters on Landscape Painting,” published in their entirety for the first time since their original publication in the Crayon in 1855.

Condition: New Hardcover

Frederic Edwin Church: Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes ($50)
by Gerald L. Carr

Description:

Published to accompany a major exhibition of notable landscapes and seascapes by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), this catalogue offers a rich sampling of the artist's five decades of creative production.Reproduced here in full color, the works constitute a veritable travelogue of the places Church visited over the course of his illustrious career, including much of New York State and New England, Labrador, Central and South America, Greece, Turkey, and the Holy Land.

Condition: Like New Hardcover, faint shelf wear on bottom of the dust jacket 

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