The Hudson River School
The Hudson River school represents the first native genre of distinctly American art. The school began to produce art works in the early 1820s; comprised of a group of loosely organized painters who took as their subject the unique naturalness of the undeveloped American continent, starting with the Hudson River region in New York, but eventually extending through space and time all the way to California and the 1870s. During the period, that the school’s artists were active (c. 1820-1870) the nation was in the process of undergoing momentous political, social, and economic change. The works that the Hudson River School painters comprised reflected the changes that were taking place across the continent as well as the self-conceptualization taking place in an ever developing and ever changing America.
Many consider Thomas Cole to be the father of the Hudson River School because of an exhibition he had organized in New York City. The exhibition, which took place in 1825, displayed many of the paintings he had made during a trip up the Hudson River. Thomas Cole had the clearest vision of what the artists of the School were seeking to accomplish in their painting and how the images that they were creating complimented the American concept of national character. Ironically, Cole was not American by birth. Born in England in 1801, Cole did not immigrate to the United States until he was twenty years old. Cole wrote an essay titled: Essay on American Scenery, which was published in a prominent Colonial magazine. American Monthly published Cole’s essay in January of 1836. In the essay, Cole addressed nature as the characteristic that set America apart from Europe.
Cole and the other artist that were part of the genre thought of the American continent as the Garden of Eden. Subsequently they developed their own individual iconography that was expressive of the vision that America was in fact a garden, which had been provincially set aside by god for his chosen people, the Americans. For instance, lakes represented the “eye of the human countance” a mirror reflecting the undertones of the rest of the landscape, and, most importantly, linking the sky to the earth. Thus, the linking of Sky and Earth was inferring to the feeling of closeness that one got as he looked upon the American Landscape and marveled at how close it ...
... middle of paper ...
... Hunter, John Jacobus, Naomi Rosenblum and David M. Sokol, American Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Decorative Arts, Photography, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1979
Motley F. Deakin, The Home Books of the Picturesque: or American Scenery, Art, and Literature, Gainseville, Scholar's Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967
Angela Miller, The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825-1875, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1993
Perry Miller, Nature's Nation, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1967
Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting 1825-1875, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995
Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, William Cronon, Brian W. Dippie, Martha A. Sandweiss, Susan P. Schoelwer and Howard R. Lamar, Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992
John R. Stilgoe, Common Landscape of America: 1508 to 1845, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1982
Web Resources
Vitaly Komar & Alex Melamid's Most Wanted Paintings on the Web: http://www.diacenter.org/km/
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC: http://www.nga.gov/
Verner W. Crane, “A Lost Utopia of the First American Frontier,” The Sewanee Review 27, no. 1 (January 1919): 48-61
Leslie Marmon Silko, Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination, A Sense of Place, Forbes Custom Publishing 1999
Frederic Edwin Church was clearly an epic and defining figure among the Hudson River School painters, particularly in his collaborative efforts in developing a sense of national identity for America, but also in fostering tourism through landscape painting, political influence, and entrepreneurialism. By answering the national call for artists and writers to define American landscape, Church took the first steps towards becoming, not only one of America’s greatest painters, but also a successful entrepreneur when it came to selling his own work to make a living. Church was dedicated to preserving “scientific accuracy” in his interpretations of nature and beauty, which were stimulated by the scientific writings of geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.1
In Part II of A Sand County Almanac, titled "The Quality of Landscape," Leopold takes his reader away from the farm; first into the surrounding Wisconsin countryside and then even farther, on an Illinois bus ride, a visit to the Iowa of his boyhood...
Quinn, David B. North America From Earliest Discovery to First Settlements. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977.
Thomas Hart Benton was born in the familiar, small town of Neosho, Missouri. He was named after his granduncle, the famed and prominent pre-American Civil War senator. First Thomas Hart Benton studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then lived in beautiful Paris for three years. When he came back he moved to New York City after 1912 he turned away from his usual style, modernism, and gradually developed a rugged naturalism that affirmed traditional rural values. By the 1930’s Benton was riding a tide of popular acclaim along with his fellow regionalist Grant Wood, who was responsible for American Gothic, and John Steuart Curry, who was responsible for The Tragic Prelude. The mural, America Today (1930-1931, The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S., New York City), Thomas Hart Benton’s masterpiece, presented an optimistic portrayal of a vital country filled with earthy, muscular figures.
Beginning his career as an artist early in life, Turners father provided his young son his first exhibition space, hanging and selling Turners works in the family Barbershop. Turners’ early experiences in art were limited and largely self-taught until entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1789 at the age of 14. From 1790 onwards Turner was heavily influences by architectural draftsman and teacher of perspective, Thomas Malton, a man Turner described as his ‘real master.’ The influence of Malton is clear in Turners superb architectural renderings that frequent his landscapes, being praised by the London Times of the 3rd of May 1797 for his ‘exquisite architectural views. ’
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
In the era where Thomas Cole first established the Hudson River School, other artist that is not from the United State such as John Constable, has the same taste in nature and outdoors. John Constable who is from England, created many painting from the surrounding area from his backyard to the countryside. For Cole’s painting, his work of art has been throughout the Hudson River, therefore, his painting consist of vast amount of forest, river, and mountains. He also travels in many locations in America and even done some painting in Europe. Both painter love nature, for this example, landscape will be the primary focus.
...ing he learned to create a stunning landscape. As the founder of the Hudson River school Cole influenced many students to follow in his own footsteps. Painting trees, fields and skies Thomas Cole is an artist who will be remembered for many years to come.
Utley, Robert M., The Indian Frontier of the American West 1846-1890. Pub: by University of New mexico Press, 1984
Grant Wood’s American Gothic is one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art. The painting brought Wood almost instant fame after being exhibited for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. It is probably the most reproduced and parodied works of art, and has become a staple within American pop-culture. The portrait of what appears to be a couple, standing solemnly in front of their mid-western home seems to be a simplistic representation of rural America. As simple as it sounds, when looking deeper into this image, it reveals something much more complex.
The naissance of the Hudson River School style launched a new era of artwork. Thomas Cole started this school and it was because of him American landscape painting came of age with the success. This was the first school of painting in the United States. Located in Northern New York by the Hudson River, the paintings focused on the nature and wilderness of the surrounding area. The Hudson River Painters believed that nature was a direct manifestation of God. As such, nature was to be depicted as accurately and as detailed as possible. If a man was included in a painting at all, he was painted small in stature to emphasize his relationship to nature (God). Because nature was considered perfect, the Hudson River Painters attempted to draw and paint landscapes directly, not from memory or imagination, and without embellishments or contrivances. The American landscape, wild and unspoiled, became a great source of national pride. The museums and galleries now focused on American art rather than European art for the first time. Importantly, the school helped make Manifest Destiny a popular idea, and thus contributed to western expansion.
Peter, S., 1996. The History of American Art Education. 7th ed. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective. Vol 2.13th ed. Boston: Wadsworth/ Cengage Learning, 2010.