The Hudson River School

Background: pre-1825

European influence:

Naïve style

Naïve style

Formal Principles

Subjects

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

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

The Beautiful

Burke on the Sublime

The Sublime

Thomas Moran, The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872

Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains (1866)

Picturesque

Characteristics of the Picturesque

Thomas Cole, Roman Campagna (Ruins of Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma), 1843

The Hudson River School

Thomas Cole (1801-1848)

Thomas Cole

 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)

Asher B. Durand, Hudson River Scene (1846)

Asher B. Durand,
Kindred Spirits  (1849)

John William Casilear, View on Lake George, 1857

Panoramists and Luminists

Practitioners

Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900)

Jasper Cropsey, Palisades at Sunset
(Spyten Duyvil)

Jasper Cropsey, Gates of the Hudson

Jasper Cropsey, Autumn on the Hudson (1860)

Frederick Edwin Church

Frederick Edwin Church, Falls of Niagara (1857)

The Heart of the Andes (1859)

Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness (1860)

George Inness (1825-1894)

George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley, 1855

W. L. Sonntag, Afternoon on the Hudson (1855)

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

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)

The Return of Rip Van Winkle (c.1849)

Illustration from The Pioneers

Note on Sources

Web sites on the Hudson River School