The Hudson River School
American Art 1820-1870
Donna M. Campbell, Washington State University
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Background: pre-1825

Portraiture
– European influence
– American “Naive” style
 Flat design, spare painting (Ammi Phillips, 1788-1865)

Landscapes
– Often appear as detail of portraiture: property seen
through an open window indicates wealth
– Washington Allston’s imaginary landscapes
European influence:

John Singleton
Copley, Paul Revere,
1768
Naïve style

Ammi Phillips, Portrait of Harriet
Campbell, 1815
Naïve style

Edward Hicks, The
Peaceable Kingdom
(1834)
Formal Principles
Not merely topographic but interpretive and poetic
views of nature
 Formal composition and attention to detail
 Depictions of harmony in nature

Subjects
“Home in the Wilderness”
 Juncture of civilization and wilderness: “Wilderness
on the doorstep”
 Incursions of civilization and progress

Thomas Cole, The Hunter’s Return (1845)
Thomas Cole, Home in the Woods (1847)
Thomas Cole, Daniel Boone Sitting at the Door of his
Cabin on the Great Osage Lake, Kentucky, 1826
Thomas Doughty, Home on the Hudson
Style

Juxtaposition of elements
– Use of panoramic views and small human figures to
show immensity of nature and insignificance of human
beings
Distant or elevated perspective for the viewer
 Symbolic use of light and darkness
 Contrast of diverse elements to show the unity of
nature

Thomas Cole, Scene from Last of the Mohicans”:
Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund (1827)
E. C. Coates, West Point (1855)
Thomas Cole, The Clove, Catskills (1827)
Sublime, Beautiful, Picturesque

Longinus, On the Sublime (AD 50)
– Resulting from spirit--a spark from writer to reader-rather than technique
Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry into the
Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
(1757-1759)
 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790)

– Beauty is finite; the sublime is infinite
The Beautiful
Feminine qualities
 Harmony
 Sociability
 Pastels
 Sensual curves

Burke on the Sublime
Painful idea creates a sublime passion
 Sublime concentrates the mind on a single facet of
experience, producing a momentary suspension of
rational activity
 Harsh, antisocial, “masculine” representations exist
in the realm of obscurity and brute force

The Sublime
“Agreeable horror” results from portrayals of
threatening objects
 Greater aesthetic value if the pain producing the
effect is imaginary rather than real
 Feelings of awe at sublime nature the aim of certain
kinds of art
 Influenced Poe, the “Graveyard School” of poetry,
and Gothic novels

Thomas Moran, The Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone, 1872
Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains
(1866)
Picturesque
Intermediate category between the sublime and the
beautiful
 Allowed the painter to organize nature into what
Pope called a “wild civility”
 William Gilpin: illustrated tours in the 1790s
established the conventions

Characteristics of the Picturesque
Ruggedness and asymmetry
 Irregularity of line
 Contrasts of light and shadow
 Landscape as a rundown Arcadia

– Ruined towers, fractured rocks
– Mossy banks and winding streams
– Blighted or twisted trees

Appeal to nostalgia for preindustrial age
Thomas Cole, Roman Campagna (Ruins of Aqueducts
in the Campagna di Roma), 1843
The Hudson River School
Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
 Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
 Thomas Doughty (1793-1856)
 John William Casilear

Thomas Cole (1801-1848)

Discovered in 1825 by
– John Trumbull,
– William Dunlap
– Asher B. Durand
“The subject of art should
be pure and lofty . . .a moral,
religious, or poetic effect
must be produced on the mind.”

Thomas Cole
Lake with
Dead Trees
(1825)
 The painting that made
Cole famous.

Allegorical and realistic landscapes: The Voyage of
Life (Childhood) , 1842
Thomas Cole, A View of the Mountain Pass Called the
Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch), 1839
Thomas Cole, The Ox-Bow (1836)
Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
Began as an engraver; turned to painting
 “Letters on Landscape Painting” (1855) in The
Crayon
 “Go first to nature to learn to paint landscape.”

Asher B. Durand, Hudson River Scene (1846)
Asher B. Durand,
Kindred Spirits (1849)
Thomas Cole and William
Cullen Bryant
 See Bryant’s “To Cole, the
Painter, Departing for
Europe.”

John William Casilear, View on Lake George, 1857
Panoramists and Luminists
Second Generation of Hudson River school
 Style of Hudson River painters applied to other
regions:

– Rocky Mountains
– South America
Practitioners
Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900)
 Frederic E. Church (1826-1900)
 John Frederick Kensett (1816-1873)
 George Inness (1825-1894)
 Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900)
Imitator of Cole’s allegorical works
 Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress:

– Sixty large scenes unrolled to music and lectures.
– Panorama was eight feet high by 850’ long.
– Entire presentation took about two hours.
Jasper Cropsey, Palisades at Sunset
(Spyten Duyvil)
Jasper Cropsey, Gates of the Hudson
Jasper Cropsey, Autumn on the Hudson (1860)
Frederick Edwin Church
Thomas Cole’s major pupil
 Full-length “showpiece” landscapes

– Falls of Niagara (1857)
– Heart of the Andes (1859)
Landscape as symbol of divine
 American continent as new Eden
 Painted from nature, not notes and sketches

Frederick Edwin Church, Falls of Niagara (1857)
Compare this painting with a photograph taken near the same spot in 2000.
The Heart of the Andes (1859)
Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness
(1860)
George Inness (1825-1894)

The Lackawanna Valley (1855)
– Landscape meditation on relation of man and nature
– Harmonious integration of man’s progress and
landscape

Unlike Cole: “A work of art does not appeal to the
moral sense. Its aim is not to instruct and edify, but
to awaken an emotion.”
George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley, 1855
W. L. Sonntag, Afternoon on the Hudson (1855)
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
One of first major artists to explore the West
 The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak (1863)
 A Storm in the Rocky Mountains (1866)
 Yosemite Valley (1875)

Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains,
Lander's Peak, 1863
Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains
(1866)
Albert Bierstadt, Yosemite Valley (1875)
John Quidor (1801-1881)
Not of the Hudson River school
 Created dreamlike, fanciful interpretations of literary
scenes
 Artisan-painter: uses bright, ornamental colors

The Return of Rip Van Winkle (c.1849)
Illustration from The Pioneers
Note on Sources

Among the sources used:
– E. P. Richardson, Painting in America
– Ellwood C. Parry, Art of Thomas Cole
– John K. Howatt, The Hudson River and Its Painters
– General knowledge about Hudson River school
– Burke, Kant, Longinus
– Pictures are mostly from Sandra Hildreth’s site (used
with permission)
Web sites on the Hudson River
School
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Brief discussion of the school from “I hear America Singing” at pbs.org
Index of Hudson River paintings (many images)
The Artfact site has a brief description of the school and links to many of
the lesser-known painters.
More paintings and links from artlex.com
The Albany Institute has images of paintings by Cole, Durand, and others.
Hudson River School entry from Wikipedia.
A project by Kathleen Hogan (American Studies) at the University of Virginia
discusses Alexis de Tocqueville and the Hudson River School.
The New-York Historical Society site features an essay on the school and a
description of the museum’s current exhibition on New York paintings,
which runs through February 2006.