Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was not an actual school but a group of like-mined landscape painters who worked in a similar style from about 1825 to the 1870s. The growing number of crowded industrial cities in the East gave rise to an appreciation for pictures of the landscape untouched by man. The movement was fueled by the poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson and by the conviction that God had given he American people an abundance of natural resources as a source of wealth and prosperity.
Thomas Cole (1801-1848) influenced an entire generation of American painters who concentrated on the fields, streams, and rolling hills of New York and New England. His most famous pupil, Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), joyfully celebrate the beauty of his native Connecticut by painting his early masterpiece, West Rock, New Haven, 1849.
The expanding merchant class purchased the landscapes of Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), Thomas Moran (1837-1926), and Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900), among many others, to hang in their townhouses recently built in the dramatically expanding cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. With the Industrial Revolution the pristine forests and agricultural environment were increasingly threatened and factories began to mar the landscape. Some nostalgic patrons bought the Hudson River School paintings, hoping to remember the land as it was.
The Hudson River artists paved the way for the movements known as Luminism and Epic Landscape. In contrast to the painters of the Hudson River School, the Luminists focused on landscapes that were less romantic and more concerned with detailed forms defined by light. Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) produced landscapes and seascapes in which the sky usually occupies at least half the composition. He applied paint in such a way that brushstrokes are not visible. The Luminist landscapes and seascapes are ordered, calm, and tranquil unlike the pictures of their Hudson River School predecessors.
The Epic Landscape movement was inspired by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which created an unswerving fascination for the West. Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) reflected this admiration with such majestic works as "Seal Rock," 1872-1887. He worked in exotic places far removed from the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains that had inspired Cole and the earlier generation of the Hudson River School.
Other artists of the period such as George Inness (1825-1894) traveled to Italy and beyond to seek inspiration in the old world. European artists and scenery captured their imagination and informed their depictions of the landscape. Similarly, the sculptors of the 19th century studied in Florence and Rome and created marble statues of remarkable beauty by carving pure white Carrara marble.
Thomas Cole (1801-1848) influenced an entire generation of American painters who concentrated on the fields, streams, and rolling hills of New York and New England. His most famous pupil, Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), joyfully celebrate the beauty of his native Connecticut by painting his early masterpiece, West Rock, New Haven, 1849.
The expanding merchant class purchased the landscapes of Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), Thomas Moran (1837-1926), and Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900), among many others, to hang in their townhouses recently built in the dramatically expanding cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. With the Industrial Revolution the pristine forests and agricultural environment were increasingly threatened and factories began to mar the landscape. Some nostalgic patrons bought the Hudson River School paintings, hoping to remember the land as it was.
The Hudson River artists paved the way for the movements known as Luminism and Epic Landscape. In contrast to the painters of the Hudson River School, the Luminists focused on landscapes that were less romantic and more concerned with detailed forms defined by light. Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) produced landscapes and seascapes in which the sky usually occupies at least half the composition. He applied paint in such a way that brushstrokes are not visible. The Luminist landscapes and seascapes are ordered, calm, and tranquil unlike the pictures of their Hudson River School predecessors.
The Epic Landscape movement was inspired by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which created an unswerving fascination for the West. Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) reflected this admiration with such majestic works as "Seal Rock," 1872-1887. He worked in exotic places far removed from the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains that had inspired Cole and the earlier generation of the Hudson River School.
Other artists of the period such as George Inness (1825-1894) traveled to Italy and beyond to seek inspiration in the old world. European artists and scenery captured their imagination and informed their depictions of the landscape. Similarly, the sculptors of the 19th century studied in Florence and Rome and created marble statues of remarkable beauty by carving pure white Carrara marble.