God's Judgment Upon Gog, Asher Brown Durand

God's Judgment Upon Gog, Asher Brown Durand (1852)

Durand's dramatic canvas was inspired by a passage from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel (39:17) which foretells God's destruction of Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and the enemy of Israel. In the painting, the prophet Ezekiel stands on a promontory at the lower left corner, and at God's command he calls forth the predatory birds and wild beasts that proceed to devour Gog's troops in the valley of Hamon-gog. The painting's dramatic staging -the rocky crags, boiling black clouds, and jagged lightning bolts- is closely allied with the pictorial conventions of the eighteenth-century "sublime," or awe-inspiring, landscape. Durand stood at the forefront of the Hudson River School, and he typically devoted himself to straightforward forest scenes and contemplative mountain views.