Kindred Spirits by Asher Brown Durand: Analysis and History
Visual Analysis
Kindred Spirits is quintessential of Romanticism because it shows nature in its ideal form — dramatic, vast, superior — portraying an elevated, heavenly beauty contrasted with dark undergrowth. In the painting, two people are faced towards one another, but almost as if they have to force themselves away from the landscape; the viewer feels this confliction within the men, not resentment, but a sort of resignation, to talk to one another rather than sit in silence with nature — the confliction we all have between society and our connection with the environment.
There seems to be no single focus in the painting, allowing the eye to wander as it would in a forest, moving from place to place like a frog jumping on a lillypad, and there is an overwhelming sense of green. For its symbolic meaning of growth, I feel like this green is what softens the painting, especially since it places a circular, curved border around the picture. If the trees were bare, the people standing on the cliff might appear in a more precarious position, but it’s clear that the scenery is supposed to symbolize comfort and positive regression back to human roots. The light also contributes to this feeling of warmth (for lack of a better word) and transcendence, like heaven has blessed the Earth as sacred. It’s not like lightning, or a sweltering sun, but is specifically benevolent light.
But while the scape seems ideal (a term heavily connoted as synthetic), the colors are modest and naturalistic, and the scene is not embellished, which almost seems like a contradiction. Like nature is organically harmonious, perfect, and unbelievable devoid of real flaw. It is one of the few things in life that can be natural, flawed, but at the same time ideal.
But while this painting represents the relationship between man and nature, nature is clearly the superior. For instance, although the people are standing on a cliff, physically high in the landscape, to the right of them, there is a taller cliff. Along with this, the border of nature which consumes the men in greenery, even the focus of the men is nature. It is the reason they are there, and the reason we are looking at the painting.
The impermanence of the painting is especially striking, which I feel comes from the sense of movement: an eagle flies in the distance, a waterfall flows down a distant cliff, and even the light seems to be falling and moving towards night. This impermanence asks the reader how much of their life has been permanent due to inattentiveness and how much time they’ve spent focused on their community, family, or partner, not noticing slight changes. The painting asks if life has seemed habitual and staid because we do not take long enough to notice beauty, and the innateness of impermanence when referring to beauty. We are asking ourselves, Why are the men not looking at the landscape! It is beautiful! Stop talking! Which seems to be exactly why Asher Durand is laughing at us. The men are dressed in the colors of the landscape, but they do not seem consumed, intoxicated, impressed by the rarity of the beautiful impermanence, and for this, we are sad for them, as sad as Durand is for us.
History
After writing my visual analysis, I was even more captivated by the scene and its human subjects. I wanted to know the ending to something that wasn’t a narrative, but felt akin to one; however, I was surprised to learn that not only had the two men been close friends but that the source of tension I felt was not resentment or resignation, but sadness. A loneliness between the two friends that could not be redressed.
In reality, the two men were Thomas Cole (who died a year before this painting was commissioned) and his good friend, the poet William Cullen Bryant, both friends of Durand. Further, the work was commissioned by a friend of Bryants’ after being touched by his eulogy read at Cole’s funeral. This commemoration can be seen in the engraving of their names in the birch tree on the left side of the painting.
Although the painting is set in the Appalachian Mountains, this specific geography was a hodgepodge of memory from Cole’s visit there decades earlier, idealized as he talks to his friend left behind in life. The painting’s history proves that ephemeral quality I mentioned, the focus on mortality and impermanence. Even the title seems to reflect these ideas of transcendence; ironically though, Kindred Spirits was not the initial name, but attached later after a poem by John Keats; the poem reads:
“Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thought refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.”
Keats wrote these lines in 1841, but even so, it feels as if he was writing specifically about these two friends, their connection with nature, and how even the eventual can feel untimely.
