The Beeches
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
60 3/8 x 48 1/8 in. (153.4 x 122.2 cm)
Classification
Painting
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Maria DeWitt Jesup, from the collection of her husband, Morris K. Jesup, 1914
Accession Number
15.30.59
Tags
Art Historical Context
Asher B. Durand’s *The Beeches* (1845) captures a serene American woodland scene dominated by towering beech trees, their silvery trunks rising against a luminous sky. Painted in oil on canvas, the work measures over five feet tall, allowing viewers to feel immersed in the forest’s quiet grandeur. Durand includes subtle pastoral details—grazing sheep and a shepherd—that evoke a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, a hallmark of mid-nineteenth-century American landscape painting. Durand, a leading figure of the Hudson River School, created this canvas during a period when artists...
About the Artist
Asher Brown Durand · 1796–1886
Was a principal member of the Hudson River School. American artist; associated with the Hudson River School of landscape painting. Comment on works: Portraits