Hudson River school
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Hudson River school was a 19th century American group of landscape painters whose approach was related to romanticism. Their paintings depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area. (School in this usage is a group of people whose thought, work, or style demonstrates a common thread, rather than a learning institution.)
Hudson River school paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century: discovery, exploration, and settlement. The paintings also depict the American landscape as a pastoral setting, where human beings and nature coexist peacefully. Their later works are often described as luminism.
Hudson River School landscapes are characterized by their realistic and detailed portrayal of nature. In general, Hudson River School artists believed that nature itself was an ineffable manifestation of God, though the artists varied in the depth of their religious conviction. They took as their inspiration such European masters as Claude Lorrain and John Constable, and shared a reverence for the natural world with contemporary American writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The artist Thomas Cole is acknowledged as the first Hudson River school painter. Cole journeyed into the Catskill Mountains of New York State in 1825 to paint the first landscapes of the area. His collaborator and friend, Asher Durand, was a prominent figure in the school as well. The second generation of Hudson River School artists rose to prominence after Cole's death in 1848 and include John Frederick Kensett and Sanford Robinson Gifford. Most of the finest works of the Hudson River School were painted between 1855 and 1875.
The term Hudson River School is thought to have originated in the late 1870s. Art historians believe it was given, like the term Impressionism, by a disapproving art critic.
In 2005, the world's largest collection of Hudson River school landscapes can be seen at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Some of the most notable works in Atheneum's collection are 13 landscapes by Thomas Cole, and 11 by Hartford native Frederick Edwin Church, both of whom were personal friends of the museum's founder, Daniel Wadsworth.
Hudson River school artists
- Thomas Cole
- Asher Brown Durand
- Jasper Francis Cropsey
- Thomas Doughty
- Albert Bierstadt
- Thomas Moran
- John Frederick Kensett
- Frederic Edwin Church
- Sanford Robinson Gifford
- Homer Dodge Martin
- Gilbert Munger
- Martin Johnson Heade
