Ariadne: Durand’s Engraving after Vanderlyn

A sleeping woman occupies a sheltered opening beside the sea in Asher Brown Durand’s Ariadne. Her pale figure and the cloth beneath her stand out against a dense setting of trunks, branches and shaded ground. Published in 1835 after John Vanderlyn’s painting, the engraving records an important achievement in the career Durand pursued before becoming known chiefly for landscapes.^[1]

The impression shown here belongs to Princeton University Art Museum. A second image presents Durand’s own painted copy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Together, they make the passage from colour to engraved line visible, while keeping three different objects distinct: Vanderlyn’s original painting, Durand’s preparatory oil and the published print.^[2]

The sleeping figure and the sea

The woman lies across the lower part of the image, her body following a long diagonal from the raised head and arm at the left toward the legs at the right. Folded cloth beneath her supplies a second pattern of slopes and curves. The foreground remains close enough for these forms to carry the composition.

Trees rise behind the head and shoulders, while a large trunk and spreading branches extend over the scene. Their darker surfaces give the pale figure a sheltered setting. Small plants and irregular ground connect the body’s resting place with the surrounding woodland.

An opening at the right leads beyond the vegetation toward water and distant land. This interval changes the scale of the scene: the viewer can move from the sleeping figure to a much more extensive coastal setting. The background also keeps Ariadne’s isolation visible without supplying a second principal figure.

The Met identifies the subject as Ariadne, the Cretan princess abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos. That narrative supplies the circumstances of the sleep and separation shown in the composition.^[2]

The print does not arrange the story as a sequence of several episodes. Its attention remains on one resting body within a particular environment. Knowledge of the myth therefore changes how the quiet scene is understood, even though the absent Theseus contributes no visible action of his own.

What engraved line can do

The pale body is the clearest light area within the woodland setting. Changes in tone around the limbs and torso make its rounded form distinguishable from the flatter cloth underneath. The face and resting arms remain part of this continuous arrangement of light and shadow.

Across the print, closely grouped lines create darker passages. More open intervals allow the paper’s lighter surface to remain visible. The resulting pattern can suggest a solid trunk, dense foliage or softer modelling according to how the marks follow the form.

The cloth provides another opportunity to compare surfaces. Its folds change direction more abruptly than the rounded body, creating narrow dark intervals beside lighter ridges. These alternations help separate fabric from skin even though both are represented in the same printed ink.

The surrounding trees demand a different distribution of marks. Irregular branches interrupt the upper opening, while foliage gathers into dark masses. That variety gives the woodland enough substance to support the figure without making every part of the scene equally prominent.

This is a translation of a painted composition into a different means of description. The print cannot simply reproduce the oil’s red drapery, brown trunks or green foliage as those colours. It establishes relationships between them through tone, contour and the direction and concentration of lines.

Marilyn S. Kushner and Linda S. Ferber discuss Durand’s working passage from painted source to drawing and then to the engraved plate. Their account places the print within an established craft practice that required both close study of another artist’s design and decisions about its new medium.^[4]

Vanderlyn’s original and Durand’s oil copy

Vanderlyn’s original Ariadne dates from 1809–14 and belongs to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, according to the Met’s account. The coloured comparison reproduced here is Durand’s copy after that work, rather than Vanderlyn’s canvas itself.^[2]

The Met dates the copy to about 1831–35. It records the medium as oil on canvas, dimensions of 43.5 × 49.2 cm and accession 97.29.2. Samuel P. Avery gave it to the museum in 1897.

In this oil, red fabric creates a strong colour accent beneath the pale figure. The brown-green trees and deeper shadows establish the surrounding enclosure, while the sea opening remains lighter. Those relationships make useful points of comparison with the monochrome print.

The copy is also an independent surviving stage in Durand’s work. The Met explains that he usually made a small oil version before engraving a painted source. Its presence here allows the preparatory process to be considered through an actual object rather than through an imagined reconstruction.

John Durand’s 1894 memoir gives a closely related account. Although the original painting was available in his father’s studio, John says Durand first made a reduced copy in colour at the intended engraving’s size. He praises its drawing, modelling and communication of the original’s overall effect.^[3]

John’s assessment belongs to a retrospective family memoir. The present museum objects provide firmer identities for the surviving oil and print; his account supplies testimony about the sequence of work. These kinds of evidence can be used together without treating a son’s praise as a modern technical examination.

Reading the complete sheet

The Princeton image includes the paper surrounding the printed composition. These broad margins are part of the surviving impression, with the lower area carrying the title and production credits. Keeping them visible allows the picture to be read as a published object.

The museum records three different measurements. The image is 36 × 45.3 cm, the plate 45 × 53.5 cm and the sheet 58.5 × 71.8 cm. These describe different extents and should remain separately identified.^[1]

Below the composition, the inscriptions identify Vanderlyn as painter and Durand as engraver. They also credit the printer. The sheet consequently distinguishes the person who supplied the painted design from the people who translated and printed it.

The publication line names Durand in New York, Hodgson, Boys & Graves in London and a publisher in Paris. The city names show the geographical reach envisaged for the published work. They do not establish how many impressions were actually sold in each place.

Princeton’s record also transcribes the 1835 copyright entry for the Southern District of New York. The date appears within the object’s own publication apparatus, as well as in the museum’s current catalogue identification.

The Princeton impression is credited to the Mather Collection and carries accession x1949-255. Those details attach the displayed sheet to a specific collection object. They also prevent its margins, inscriptions and individual appearance from being mistaken for the appearance of every surviving impression.

Printer, engraver and publisher

Princeton identifies Albert B. King as the printer. Durand’s role as engraver concerns the plate and its translation of the painted image; King’s credit concerns the printing of the impression. The inscription’s separate names make that collaboration explicit.^[1]

Durand also appears in the publication line. His involvement therefore extended beyond making the image-bearing plate. This helps explain why the practical reception and sale of the print mattered within the account of his professional career.

John’s memoir describes difficulties in obtaining satisfactory impressions and reports that many had to be discarded. He also says that a considerable number remained unsold. These are historical claims made in 1894, rather than findings from a present survey of the surviving edition.^[3]

The account should not be used to diagnose this Princeton sheet as defective. Its value here is to show that the printed result and the commercial circulation of an image could pose problems distinct from the engraver’s work on the plate.

John also connects the disappointing sales with the limited audience for this kind of nude subject. That interpretation reflects his account of public taste. It gives one contemporary family perspective on reception without establishing a single response shared by all nineteenth-century viewers.

A major work near a professional turning point

Kushner and Ferber record Durand’s purchase of Vanderlyn’s Ariadne in 1831 and place the 1835 engraving near the end of his principal professional engraving career. Their discussion treats it as a culminating work in a practice that had included portraits, reproductive prints and banknotes.^[4]

This background expands the meaning of Durand’s later reputation. His landscapes followed years spent judging proportion, modelling and the translation of painted effects. Ariadne preserves that sustained attention within a subject quite different from his forest interiors.

The change in professional emphasis should not be understood as the disappearance of his interest in prints. Kushner and Ferber describe a continuing engagement with print collecting later in life. The major shift concerned the work for which he increasingly became known.

A comparison with The Beeches makes the difference visible. In Ariadne, the woodland supports a principal figure borrowed from another painter’s mythological design. In the later landscape, trees, road and rural activity become the composition’s primary subject. The print remains valuable both for its own concentrated image and for the earlier craft it preserves.