Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849, oil on canvas, 111.8 x 91.4 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art)
Additional resources
This work at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
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[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, looking at one of the most famous, one of the most recognized paintings in American history. This is by Asher B. Durand. It’s called “Kindred Spirits.”
Dr. Mindy Besaw: [0:17] The figures are William Cullen Bryant, the poet, and with him is Thomas Cole. William Cullen Bryant was asked to give the speech in the memorial service for Cole after he had passed.
Dr. Zucker: [0:28] These men were good friends. In fact, Jonathan Sturges, the man who commissioned this portrait, was also quite close to both of them, so this is a very private painting.
Dr. Besaw: [0:38] There are lots of things that remind us of the importance of the Catskills, and there are lots of things that we could unpack for this canonical story of American art. One of those is Thomas Cole, as the so-called founder of the American School of painting.
Dr. Zucker: [0:54] Let’s unpack this term, Hudson River School, for a moment. Thomas Cole famously went up the Hudson River, north of New York City, to this ancient mountain range, an area that was still very rural, and began to paint it, often with a deep spirituality embedded in the landscape.
[1:13] This interest in finding this rugged terrain was a direct consequence of the fact that New York City was growing at an enormous pace. By the time that this is painted, by the end of Cole’s life, in 1849, New York City had become the primary city on the east coast of the United States.
Dr. Besaw: [1:33] For Cole, he very directly says, “The wilderness is that place to speak to God,” but Durand, instead, sees nature as a studio for the artist. There’s a difference in the way Durand thinks about it than Cole.
Dr. Zucker: [1:49] For most of Durand’s painting career, he had been using a much more traditional method borrowed from the European, which is to sketch outside and then to go back to the studio and to create invented compositions.
[2:01] But here, we’re seeing a distinct change, and that may be in part a kind of homage to Cole, but also responding to a new interest in realism, a fidelity to the geology of these rocks, to the specificity of this incredible bough, and the foliage as it arcs across the top of this painting.
Dr. Besaw: [2:18] There’s something so delightful about how the sun reflects on the shoulders of the men, and then every little leaf on the tree in the foreground, and then it goes back into that wonderful atmospheric perspective and those shades of blue. Some of the delightful details in this is the fern in the foreground, the moss on the rock.
[2:39] Look at the chipping away [of] the bark on the trees. All of those details convince the viewer that they’re standing in this gorge with these men. But we have to remember that the artists are translating landscape for the viewer.
[2:54] The blasted tree in the foreground, that’s a direct reference to Cole. It’s also his life cut short. Cole died suddenly. He was still a young man.
Dr. Zucker: [3:04] Yet the men are standing on this ancient rock that is covered with moss, and it speaks to a kind of agelessness. There is this idea of the eternity of nature as a solace for the loss of this man. The title, “Kindred Spirits,” references a poem by the English romantic poet John Keats, titled “O Solitude.”
Dr. Besaw: [3:27] “In my soul’s pleasure, and it sure must be almost the highest bliss of humankind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.”
Dr. Zucker: [3:36] The very beginning of the poem, there is a reference to this historical moment where Keats is saying, “If I must be alone, it shouldn’t be among the murky buildings of the city. Instead, climb with me the steep — nature’s observatory.” That is, going out into the wilderness, in a place that I think for all of these men inherently more spiritual.
[3:58] It is such a lovely idea to commission a painting as a memory of a friend. And that a painting like this that captures such an intimate relationship can become such a public statement about American art.
Dr. Besaw: [4:12] For many of our visitors who maybe haven’t visited the Catskills, there’s something familiar about this because it looks a lot like the Ozarks. Perhaps that’s also the success of the painting, is that it can overlay and feel specific to many different viewers at many different times and in many different places.
[4:31] [music]
