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Index
of Hudson River School Painters
Brief video and
web page from PBS's "I hear America singing" site.
I. Background: Pre-1825 Types of Paintings
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Portraiture
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European influence
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"Naive" style
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Landscapes
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Often appear as a detail of portraiture: for example, the property seen
through an open window in a portrait suggests the family's wealth.
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Washington Allston's imaginary landscapes
II. Formal Principles
Not merely topographic but interpretive and poetic views of nature
Formal composition and attention to detail
Depictions of harmony in nature
III. Subjects
"Home in the Wilderness"
Juncture of civilization and wilderness: "Wilderness on the doorstep"
Incursions of civilization and progress
IV. Style
Juxtaposition of elements
Nature on a grand scale with smaller figures of man and markers of civilization
Use of panoramas 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
IV. Sublime, Beautiful, Picturesque
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Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757-1759)
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Beautiful: feminine qualities
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Harmony
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Sociability
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Pastels
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Sensual curves
V. Sublime
Harsh, antisocial, "masculine"
Realm of obscurity and brute force
"Agreeable horror"
Feelings of sublimity from portrayals of threatening objects
Feelings of awe at sublime nature
Thomas Moran, The
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872
Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains (1866)
VI. Picturesque
Can be intermediate category (William Gilpin)
Ruggedness and asymmetry
Landscape as a rundown Arcadia
Ruined towers
Mossy banks
Appeal to nostalgia for preindustrial age
VII. The Hudson River School
Thomas Cole (1801-1848) (index to paintings)
Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
Thomas
Doughty (1793-1856)
John William Casilear
Thomas Moran
VII. Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
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Discovered in 1825 by
- John Trumbull
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William Dunlap
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Asher B. Durand
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"The subject of art should be pure and lofty . . .a moral, religious, or
poetic effect must be produced on the mind."
- Lake
with Dead Trees(1825)
VIII. Allegorical and realistic landscapes
IX. Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
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Began as an engraver; turned to painting
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"Letters on Landscape Painting" (1855) in The Crayon
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"Go first to nature to learn to paint landscape."
John William Casilear, View
on Lake George, 1857
X. Panoramists and Luminists: Second Generation
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Style of Hudson River painters applied to other regions:
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Rocky Mountains, South America
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Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900)
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John Frederick Kensett (1816-1873)
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Frederick E. Church (1826-1900)
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George Inness (1825-1894)
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Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
XI. Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900)
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Imitator of Cole's allegorical works
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Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress: Sixty large scenes unrolled to music
and lectures
XI. Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900)
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Thomas Cole's major pupil
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Full-length "showpiece" landscapes
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Landscape as symbol of divine
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American continent as new Eden
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Painted from nature, not notes and sketches
XII. George Inness
(1825-1894)
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Landscape meditation on relation of man and nature
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Harmonious integration of man's progress and landscape
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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."
W. L. Sonntag, Afternoon
on the Hudson (1855)
XIII.
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
XIV. John Quidor (1801-1881)
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Not of the Hudson River school
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Created dreamlike, fanciful interpretations of literary scenes
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Artisan-painter: uses bright, ornamental colors
- The Return
of Rip Van Winkle (c.1849)
For more information on the Hudson River School of painters:
Web sites Albany
Institute of History and Art
Sandra Hildreth's
project on the Hudson River painters
Desmond
Fish Library links to paintings
Thomas Cole's paintings (index
at Yale)
Carol Gerten Jackson's
site
Books
Thanks to English 310 (Fall 1998) student Holly Holmes for suggesting these
references:
Boime, Albert. The Magisterial Gaze. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution, 1991.
Callow, James T. Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American
Artists, 1807-1855. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1967.
Deakin, Motley F. Introduction. The Home Book of the Picturesque:
or, American Scenery, Art, and Literature. 1852. Gainesville: Scholars'
Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967. |