{{ titlePrefix }} Asher Durand
Asher Durand (1976-1886) was born in Jefferson Village (now Maplewood), New Jersey. Durand first worked for his father, a watchmaker and silversmith, before apprenticing with the engraver Peter Maverick in Newark, from 1812 to 1817. Asher joined others in founding the New-York Drawing Association, which was renamed the National Academy of Design shortly after. Under the influence of his fellow artists, Durand in the 1830s turned increasingly to painting, producing genre scenes and portraits. Despite his fervent espousal of naturalism in landscape art, many of the paintings reflect more conventional landscape modes based on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French and Dutch antecedents.