Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 8, 1995 TAG: 9508080097
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The museum's new director originally had scheduled a trip to New York City art galleries only to begin a wish list. An unexpected bequest shortly before she left altered her plans - and Kuebler took off instead loaded for bear.
The result is "View Near Catskill With Round Top." The lush, sun-washed landscape by Asher B. Durand is representative of the Hudson River School - a group of home-grown American landscape painters who flourished in the middle 1800s. Durand was recognized as a leader in the group, especially after the death of the painter Thomas Cole.
His painting will be unveiled at a ceremony in the museum's upstairs gallery Aug. 30, and displayed afterward for a time with several other paintings from the Hudson River School. Most of the paintings are on loan for the duration of the exhibit from New York's Hirschl & Adler Galleries - where Kuebler found the Durand - and other outside collections.
The purchase of the $40,000 painting was made possible by a bequest from the estate of Kathryn Woods Cobb.
Cobb was the daughter of Col. James Woods, a 19th-century mayor of Roanoke and a lawyer who co-founded the law firm now known as Woods Rogers & Hazlegrove. She lived in Texas until the death of her husband - also a lawyer - in the 1950s, when she returned to Roanoke, said her sister-in-law, Kate Woods.
She was a longtime fan of Roanoke's art museum, Woods said.
"She loved beautiful things. Flowers. ... She was serious about her interest in art. She painted one painting, and it wasn't perfect, and she never painted another one."
Of the painting the museum has bought with her sister-in-law's bequest, Woods said, "This is exactly what Kitty would have wanted. She would have loved it."
The painting, which until recently was in a private collection, has been exhibited many places, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
The 24-by-14-inch painting joins another, smaller painting from the Hudson River School in the museum's permanent collection. That painting is by T. Worthington Whittredge - an Ohio-born artist originally trained as a house and sign painter. Like others in the school, Whittredge often sketched and painted in the Catskill Mountains of New York.
Buying the Durand is a coup for the museum's new director, who happened upon it the day after it arrived in the New York gallery and immediately staked her claim. Kuebler had to have the approval of the museum board before the purchase could become final.
Board President Susan Shortridge said there was "a lot of discussion" about whether buying the work was the best way to use the Cobb bequest. "We talked long and hard. ... We are not accustomed to spending that kind of money for art."
In the end, she said, "We decided this was the way the money should go."
"How wonderful for this bequest to come to us, and something wonderful to happen with it," Shortridge added.
To Kuebler, buying the painting was a big step forward in her larger plan to make the Roanoke museum an important resource for the study of American art. Kuebler - who also is working to beef up the museum's library, for the convenience of scholars - is planning a concert of 19th-century chamber music in the gallery to complement the Durand's arrival.
In time, Kuebler hopes to create a college credit course, centered on the museum's two Hudson River paintings, which would touch on music, literature and painting in America at that time.
"Gifts of this caliber to the collection really make the museum a rich educational resource to the region," Kuebler said.
Durand was born in New Jersey in 1796. His father was a watchmaker and silversmith. The young Durand was apprenticed to an engraver and plied that trade for more than a decade, during which his interest shifted to portraiture and oils.
A trip with a friend to New York's Adirondack Mountains in 1837 apparently cemented a decision to concentrate on landscapes. A decade later, with Cole's death, Durand was widely recognized as the country's leading landscape painter - as well as the unofficial leader of the group of painters that would become known as the Hudson River School.
Other artists to whom the name has been applied include Whittredge, Frederic E. Church, Albert Bierstadt, Sanford R. Gifford and Jasper F. Cropsey.
The origin of the "Hudson River" tag is murky, but it was probably derisive - applied later by a younger, European-trained community of American artists to emphasize the provincialism of those who had preceded them.
"View Near Catskill With Round Top" was painted in 1864. The airy outdoor scene near Catskill, N.Y., includes a pasture and cows, a glass-surfaced river and a hazy mountain range. With its fathomless sunlight and serene summer colors, it seems to celebrate rural life.
"The painting is infused with atmosphere and sunlight and expressed Durand's concern with the nuances of mood created by space and color," writes Carissa South, curator of the exhibit of which "View Near Catskill" will be the centerpiece this month.
Durand himself once wrote that "Sunshine is the joyous expression of nature," said South.
To Kuebler - who lived in Indiana before becoming the museum's director March 1 - the misty mountain setting evokes her new Appalachian home. She hopes museum visitors will respond to the painting in the same way.
"The experience of the Blue Ridge is something everyone in this valley has," Kuebler said. "Anyone in this community could come in and really relate to it."
by CNB