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Luman Reed

1835
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 738
One of early America's great art patrons, the dry goods merchant Luman Reed of New York offered critical support to the careers of Durand, the landscape painter Thomas Cole, and the genre painter William Sidney Mount, and built a gallery in his house for the display of their work and that of the old masters. From Durand, Reed commissioned portraits of the nation's presidents and eventually encouraged the artist to abandon his original career as an engraver to become a painter. Still, he would not live to see Durand blossom as a landscape artist. Reed died untimely, just the year after the completion of this solid likeness. His passing was sorely mourned; Durand reminded Cole in a letter that Reed was "the man whose equal we shall never see again." The artist did not exaggerate, but Reed's partner, Jonathan Sturges, for whom this portrait was painted, became an important patron in his own right of Durand, Cole, and their colleagues.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Luman Reed
  • Artist: Asher Brown Durand (American, Jefferson, New Jersey 1796–1886 Maplewood, New Jersey)
  • Date: 1835
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 30 1/8 x 25 3/8 in. (76.5 x 64.5 cm)
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Mary Fuller Wilson, 1962
  • Object Number: 63.36
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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Sketchbook of Landscape and Figure Subjects, Asher Brown Durand American, Drawings in graphite on off-white wove paper, bound in a green cardboard cover, American
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Proof of one side of a New York Merchants Banking Company 100 Dollar Bill, Asher Brown Durand American, Engraving; proof
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Proofs of Bank of New York One Dollar Bill and Two Dollar Bill, Asher Brown Durand American, Engraving; proof
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