The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and White Mountains. Works by second generation artists expanded to include other locales in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

the Maritimes The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of C ...

, the American West, and South America.

Overview

The term Hudson River School is thought to have been coined by the ''New York Tribune'' art critic Clarence Cook or by landscape painter Homer Dodge Martin. It was initially used disparagingly, as the style had gone out of favor after the '' plein-air'' Barbizon School had come into vogue among American patrons and collectors. Hudson River School paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century: discovery, exploration, and settlement. They also depict the American landscape as a pastoral setting, where human beings and nature coexist peacefully. Hudson River School landscapes are characterized by their realistic, detailed, and sometimes idealized portrayal of nature, often juxtaposing peaceful agriculture and the remaining wilderness which was fast disappearing from the Hudson Valley just as it was coming to be appreciated for its qualities of ruggedness and sublimity. In general, Hudson River School artists believed that nature in the form of the American landscape was a reflection of God, though they varied in the depth of their religious conviction. They were inspired by European masters such as

Claude Lorrain Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...

, John Constable, and

J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbul ...

. Several painters were members of the

Düsseldorf School of Painting The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) during the 1830s and 1840s, when the A ...

, others were educated by German Paul Weber.

Founder

Thomas Cole is generally acknowledged as the founder of the School. He took a steamship up the Hudson in the autumn of 1825, stopping first at West Point then at Catskill landing. He hiked west high into the eastern

Catskill Mountains The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas cl ...

of New York to paint the first landscapes of the area. The first review of his work appeared in the '' New York Evening Post'' on November 22, 1825. Cole was from England and the brilliant autumn colors in the American landscape inspired him. His close friend Asher Brown Durand became a prominent figure in the school. A prominent element of the Hudson River School was its themes of nationalism, nature, and property. Adherents of the movement also tended to be suspicious of the economic and technological development of the age.

Second generation

Frederic Edwin Church - Niagara Falls - WGA04867

The ''second generation'' of Hudson River School artists emerged after Cole's premature death in 1848; its members included Cole's prize pupil Frederic Edwin Church, John Frederick Kensett, and Sanford Robinson Gifford. Works by artists of this second generation are often described as examples of Luminism. Kensett, Gifford, and Church were also among the founders of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York City. Most of the finest works of the second generation were painted between 1855 and 1875. Artists such as Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt were celebrities during that time. They were both influenced by the

Düsseldorf school of painting The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) during the 1830s and 1840s, when the A ...

, and Bierstadt had studied in that city for several years. Thousands of people would pay 25 cents per person to view paintings such as '' Niagara'' and '' The Icebergs''. The epic size of these landscapes was unexampled in earlier American painting and reminded Americans of the vast, untamed, and magnificent wilderness areas in their country. This was the period of settlement in the American West, preservation of national parks, and establishment of green city parks.

Female artists

Several women were associated with the Hudson River School. Susie M. Barstow was an avid mountain climber who painted the mountain scenery of the Catskills and the White Mountains. Eliza Pratt Greatorex was an Irish-born painter who was the second woman elected to the National Academy of Design.

Julie Hart Beers Julie Hart Beers Kempson (1835 – August 13, 1913) was an American landscape painter associated with the Hudson River School who was one of the very few commercially successful professional women landscape painters of her day. Life Born Julie ...

led sketching expeditions in the Hudson Valley region before moving to a New York City art studio with her daughters.

Harriet Cany Peale Harriet Christina Cany Peale (1799–1869) was an American landscape, portrait, and genre painter of the mid-nineteenth century. Although sometimes described as a copyist, a greater share of her oeuvre has been made public in recent years, allo ...

studied with Rembrandt Peale and Mary Blood Mellen was a student and collaborator with Fitz Henry Lane.

Legacy

Hudson River School art has had minor periods of resurgence in popularity. The school gained interest after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, probably due to nationalist attitudes. Interest declined until the 1960s, and the regrowth of the Hudson Valley has spurred further interest in the movement. Historic house museums and other sites dedicated to the Hudson River School include

Olana State Historic Site Olana State Historic Site is a historic house museum and landscape in Greenport, New York, near the city of Hudson. The estate was home to Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), one of the major figures in the Hudson River School of landscape pain ...

in Hudson, New York, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in the town of Catskill, the

Newington-Cropsey Foundation The Newington-Cropsey Foundation (NCF) is a nonprofit private organization based in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The foundation's aim is to maintain and preserve the works of Jasper Cropsey and the art movement he was a part of, the Hudson River ...

's historic house museum, art gallery, and research library in

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York Hastings-on-Hudson is a village in Westchester County located in the southwestern part of the town of Greenburgh in the state of New York, United States. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, approximately north of midtown Man ...

, and the John D. Barrow Art Gallery in the village of Skaneateles, New York.

Collections

Public collections

One of the largest collections of paintings by artists of the Hudson River School is at the Wadsworth Atheneum in

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...

. Some of the most notable works in the Atheneum's collection are 13 landscapes by Thomas Cole and 11 by Hartford native Frederic Edwin Church. They were personal friends of the museum's founder, Daniel Wadsworth.

Other collections

* Albany Institute of History & Art in Albany, New York * Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, New York * Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts *

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Cro ...

in Brooklyn, New York *

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Desig ...

, in Washington, DC * Crystal Bridges Museum, in Bentonville, Arkansas * Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, in Jacksonville, Florida * Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit, Michigan * Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York *

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, commonly known as The Loeb, is a teaching museum, major art repository, and exhibition space on the campus of Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It was founded in 1864 as the Vassar College ...

, in Poughkeepsie, New York *

Fruitlands Museum Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, is a museum about multiple visions of America on the site of the short-lived utopian community, Fruitlands. The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse (a National Historic Landmark), a museum about ...

in Harvard, Massachusetts * Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma * Haggin Museum in Stockton, California * Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York * Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee * Louvre Museum in Paris, France *

Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is a non-profit art museum in Shawnee, Oklahoma, USA. It is located on the Oklahoma Baptist University Green Campus, being the campus of the former St. Gregory's University. The museum operated independently of St. ...

in Shawnee, Oklahoma *

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. The park preserves the Marsh-Billings House, as well as the site where Frederick Billings established a managed forest and a ...

in Woodstock, Vermont *

, in Manhattan, New York * Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in Boston, Massachusetts * Museum of White Mountain Art in Jackson, New Hampshire * National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC *

Newark Museum The Newark Museum of Art (formerly known as the Newark Museum), in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States, is the state's largest museum. It holds major collections of American art, decorative arts, contemporary art, and arts of Asia, A ...

in Newark, New Jersey *

in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York * New-York Historical Society, in Manhattan, New York *

, in Hudson, New York * St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont * Westervelt Warner Museum of American Art, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama * Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid, Spain
The Heckscher Museum of Art
in Huntington, New York *

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the ...

, in Richmond, Virginia *

Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and ranks among t ...

, in Worcester, Massachusetts * Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, Connecticut The

, in their Gallery of Art Building, maintains a research library of Hudson River School art and painters, open to the public by reservation.

Notable artists

* Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) * William Mason Brown (1828–1898) * John William Casilear (1811–1893) * Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) * Thomas Cole (1801–1848) *

Samuel Colman Samuel Colman (March 4, 1832 – March 26, 1920) was an American painter, interior designer, and writer, probably best remembered for his paintings of the Hudson River. Life and career Born in Portland, Maine, Colman moved to New York City ...

(1832–1920) * Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900) * Thomas Doughty (1793–1856)Encyclopedia Britannica
/ref> * Robert Duncanson (1821–1872) * Asher Brown Durand (1796–1886) * Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880) * James McDougal Hart (1828–1901) * William Hart (1823–1894) * William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900) *

Martin Johnson Heade Martin Johnson Heade (August 11, 1819 – September 4, 1904) was an American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, and depictions of tropical birds (such as hummingbirds), as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. His pai ...

(1819–1904) * Hermann Ottomar Herzog (1832–1932) * Thomas Hill (1829–1908) * David Johnson (1827–1908) * John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872) * Jervis McEntee (1828–1891) * Thomas Moran (1837–1926) * Robert Walter Weir (1803–1889) * Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910) * Francis Augustus Silva (1835–1886)

References

Notes Sources * * * Ferber, Linda S. ''The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision''. New-York Historical Society, 2009. * Sullivan, Mark W. ''The Hudson River School: An Annotated Bibliography.'' Metcuhen, NJ; Scarecrow Press, 1991. * Wilmerding, John. ''American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs.'' National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980. . .

External links

The Hudson River School
American Art Gallery

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Wadsworth Atheneum's Hudson River School Collection
{{Authority control Luminism (American art style) American art movements Landscape art by school Cultural history of the United States Hudson River