The Beeches
Asher Brown Durand American
Durand was elected president of New York’s National Academy of Design in 1845 and submitted this monumental landscape to their annual exhibition the following year. Inspired by the bucolic scenes of the British painter John Constable, Durand relied on a large-scale vertical format for his image of daily country life, complete with a shepherd leading a flock into an American pastoral drenched in mellow light. For the first time, Durand based his composition on a sketch he made in nature, a practice he would increasingly embrace.
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