About the Artwork
Water flows rapidly down a mountain stream. On the banks, shattered tree trunks suggest the recent passage of a violent storm or a spring flood. But not all changes happen so quickly, a fact of nature suggested by many of the rocks in the stream which have been smoothed by thousands of years of flowing water. In the distance, the mountain seems unchanging and serene, although we know that it too changes over the vast sweep of geological time.
The streambed and bending tree limbs direct the viewer’s attention to Monument Mountain, one of the highest peaks in western Massachusetts. While working on this painting, Asher B. Durand was probably thinking of William Cullen Bryant’s then-famous poem Monument Mountain (1824), which begins by advising a trip to the area for anyone “who wouldst see the lovely and the wild / mingled in harmony on Nature’s face.” In the painting as in the poem, Nature is both wild and lovely, ever changing and eternal.
Monument Mountain, Berkshires
probably 1850
Asher Brown Durand
1796 - 1886
American
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 28 × 42 inches (71.1 × 106.7 cm) Framed: 43 1/4 × 57 5/8 × 6 3/8 inches (109.9 × 146.4 × 16.2 cm)
Paintings
American Art before 1950
Founders Society Purchase, Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Fund
39.6
Public Domain
Markings
Signed, lower left corner: A. B. Durand
Provenance
1938, dealer, Dalzell Hatfield (Los Angeles, California, USA);1939-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Burroughs, Clyde H. "Monument Mountain, Berkshires, by Asher B. Durand." Bulletin of the DIA 20, 1 (October 1940): pp. 5-7.
Richardson, Edgar P., ed. Catalogue of Paintings, Second Ed. Detroit, 1944, p. 41.
The Hudson River School and the Early American Landscape Tradition. Exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 1945, p. 47, no. 98.
American Painting 1804-1954. Exh. cat., The Ohio University. Athens, 1954, no. 9
The Great Decade in American Writing 1850-1860. Exh. cat., The American Academy of Arts and Letters. New York, 1954, pp. 28-29, no. 159.
American Landscape Painters 1800-1960. Exh. cat., The Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. Norkfolk, VA, 1961, no. 11.
Huntington, David C. The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church. New York, 1966, pp. 24-25 (fig. 5). [dated as ca. 1851]
Wright, Cuthbert. Fanny Kemble and the Lovely Land. New York, 1974, p. 148 (ill.).
Lawall, David. Asher Brown Durand: A Documentary Catalogue of the Narrative and Landscape Paintings. New York, 1978, p. 1978, no. 287. [dated as ca. 1869]
Shaw, Nancy Rivard, et al. American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Volume 1: Works by Artists Born Before 1816. New York, 1991, pp. 81-83 (ill.).
Ullmann, Helen Schatvet, CG, FASG, ed. Western Massachusetts Families in 1790, vol. 4. Boston, 2019, (ill. on cover).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
Asher Brown Durand, Monument Mountain, Berkshires, probably 1850, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Fund, 39.6.
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