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See the original at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville
Kindred Spirits
by Unknown Artist, 1849
Details
- Year
- 1849
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
Asher B. Durand painted this Kindred Spirits in 1849 as a tribute to his friend Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, who had died the previous year. The painting shows Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant standing on a rocky ledge in the Catskill Mountains, surrounded by golden autumn foliage and a waterfall cascading below.
The title comes from a Keats sonnet and captures the Romantic idea that nature, poetry, and painting spring from the same source. Durand placed the two men in conversation within a landscape that feels both real and idealized: every leaf is observed, but the composition is arranged like a cathedral nave with trees forming the arches.
The painting hung in the New York Public Library for over a century before Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas purchased it in 2005 for $35 million. It's one of the most important Romantic landscapes in American art.
