American Clarity

John Durand, Anne Billhop Farmer Jarvis, 1772 (Wadsworth Atheneum)
John Durand, Anne Billhop Farmer Jarvis, 1772 (Wadsworth Atheneum)

Altoon Sultan blogs about American paintings in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.

Sultan writes: "There is a strain in American painting that takes its essential character from the primitive, from a desire to grasp hold of things, to make them present and tangible. It's a reality that goes beyond the visual to the tactile... [I] was riveted by the colonial era artist John Durand's portrait. The color harmonies were beautiful, but it was the clarity of form that particularly interested me."