Lot 430
John William Casilear, N.A. (American, 1811-1893), "A Romantic View of Kauterskill Clove, with Haines Falls", mid-19th c., oil on pasteboard, signed indistinctly with initials lower left, 9 1/8 in. x 6 3/8 in., in a fine period giltwood frame. E2500-3500 Note: Casilear began exhibiting paintings at the National Academy in 1836, and on their merit was elected an Academician in 1851. In 1854 he opened a painting studio in New York, and achieved an enormous success with his landscapes (mostly of small size) in the style of his teacher Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), and of their close mutual friend John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872). This dramatic view of "the heart of the Catskills" centers on the famous landscape features that had been icons of Hudson River School painting, since Thomas Cole (1801-1848) first rendered them in the mid-1820s; but, like Durand in the most celebrated treatment of these related themes ("Kindred Spirits", 1849) Casilear here recombines landscape elements from the vale, the falls, and the distant mountains, in an imaginatively creative way (he in fact visited this very site, with Kensett and the young David Johnson, in the same year of 1849). Cole and Durand had both painted the Clove's eastward view, toward the Hudson. Casilear here accentuates touches of vibrant color, and diaphanous veils of atmospheric perspective, with a painterly skill that makes this small masterwork a highly personalized vision of his own.
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