Kindred Spirits

Asher Brown Durand painted this tribute in 1849, a year after the sudden death of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School. The painting shows Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant standing on a rocky outcrop in the Catskill Mountains, deep in conversation amid spectacular autumn foliage. The title comes from John Keats's seventh sonnet, "O Solitude."

Art collector Jonathan Sturges commissioned the work as a gift for Bryant, who had delivered Cole's funeral eulogy. The landscape combines real locations from Kaaterskill Clove with an idealized vision of American wilderness. It's not topographically accurate but emotionally true, commemorating both Cole's discovery of the region and his friendship with Bryant.

Bryant's family donated the painting to the New York Public Library in 1904. When the library decided to sell in 2005, the Metropolitan Museum and National Gallery of Art joined forces to bid, but Alice Walton topped them at $35 million, then a record for American art. The painting now anchors the collection at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.