Kindred Spirits (painting)

The Kindred Spirits (1849) is a painting by Asher Brown Durand, a member of the Hudson River School of painters. It depicts the painter Thomas Cole, who had died in 1848, and his friend, the poet William Cullen Bryant, in the Catskill Mountains. The landscape painting, which combines geographical features in Kaaterskill Clove and a minuscule depiction of Kaaterskill Falls, is not a literal depiction of American geography. Rather, it is an idealized memory of Cole's discovery of the region more than twenty years prior, his friendship with Bryant, and his ideas about American nature.

The painting was commissioned by New York art collector and advocate Jonathan Sturges as a gift to Bryant who in May 1848 had presented a eulogy for the painter Cole (who had unexpectedly died in February of that year). Sturges explained the gift by writing:

Within days of receiving the painting, Bryant wrote thank you notes to both Sturges and Durand expressing his praise for the work. Bryant described his first impression of the gift to Durand, writing, “I was more delighted with it than I can express, and am under very great obligations to you for having put so much of your acknowledged genius into a work intended for me.” He continued on to state that “the painting seems to me in your best manner, which is the highest praise.” According to Bryant, visitors to his home admired the painting too. “Every body admires it greatly," he wrote, "and places it high as a work of art.” A few weeks after the painting was delivered to Bryant, it was exhibited at the National Academy of Design. While there it received high praise in the press and periodicals. By then it was known as, Kindred Spirits, a title inspired by John Keats' "Sonnet to Solitude."

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