The year before Asher B. Durand captured this mountain scene near Fishkill, 60 miles north of New York City, he published his observations on “painting direct from Nature” in letters that offered practical advice to aspiring landscape painters. Expanding on the ideas of English art critic John Ruskin, Durand wrote, “Go first to Nature to learn to paint landscape, and when you shall have learnt to imitate her, you may then study the pictures of great artists with benefit [learning to] select, combine and set off the varied beauty of nature by means of what, in artistic language, is called treatment.” Durand’s “Letters on Landscape Painting” appeared in The Crayon: A Journal Devoted to the Graphic Arts and the Literature Related to Them.