Saturday, November 2, 2013

All Souls

Below are my photos of a painting by Asher B. Durand in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Landscape (Thanatopsis), 1850.

Durand painted this as a memorial to his close friend and fellow painter Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of painters.  Cole died a sudden and untimely death in 1848 at the age of forty seven.  Durand's painting was inspired by a poem by William Cullen Bryant, a mutual friend of Durand and Cole, titled "Thanatopsis."


















3 comments:

JCF said...

So that a burial, in the detail? [I swear, I only saw a landscape at first]

Counterlight said...

That is indeed a funeral.

William R. MacKaye said...

William Cullen Bryant wrote most of "Thanatopsis" when he was 17. He never wrote another poem half as good.