Thomas Cole “Storm King” by Thomas Cole “Sunset in the Rockies Painting” by Albert Bierstadt Study for “The Heart of the Andes” by Frederic E

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Thomas Cole “Storm King” by Thomas Cole “Sunset in the Rockies Painting” by Albert Bierstadt Study for “The Heart of the Andes” by Frederic E Lesson 3 (VISUAL ARTS, ART HISTORY) The Hudson River Painters “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly.” — Thomas Cole “Storm King” by Thomas Cole “Sunset In The Rockies Painting” by Albert Bierstadt Study for “The Heart of the Andes” by Frederic E. Church “The Solitary Oak” by Asher B. Durand “The Old Pine, Darien, Connecticut” by John Frederick Kensett ”A Coming Storm” by Sanford Robinson Gifford THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL OF PAINTING The Nation’s First Official Art Movement Kaaterskill Falls , 1826 Thomas Cole Art History Background: Henry David Thoreau went into the woods around Walden Pond to learn to live deliberately and experience a purposeful life. Like Thoreau, the English painter Thomas Cole also wanted to experience the wildness and openness of nature. Cole was influenced by German Romanticism and the British theory of the “Sublime,” the metaphysical and spiritual qualities or the fearsomeness of nature. Using dramatic form, color, and techniques, Cole began to paint the Hudson Valley area of New York and the adjoining mountains of New York and Vermont. Taken by his work, fellow artists Asher B. Durand and Frederic E. Church studied under him. By 1825, Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Kensett, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and many other notable artists, numbering around 24, joined in and the Hudson River School of Painters, the first official art movement of America, was born. Originally meant to be a disparaging term by an art critic, the name stuck. Style and Characteristics: • The landscapes focus on themes of discovery, exploration, and settlement that included nationalism, nature, and property. • The paintings are often composites of sketches made out in nature. • The principles of light and color are used to realistically portray atmospheric perspective, water, and sky. • Features of a Hudson River School landscape painting provide information about cultural and historical context. • Through viewpoint, scale, and detail, the art shows a relationship between the human and natural worlds. • The paintings highly romanticize the wilderness. Partly due to the popularity of the paintings and the simultaneous expansion of the railroad, the Northeast became more populated, more industrialized, and more travelled. The unforeseen outcome of the Hudson River School movement was the loss of nature that inspired the art, through economic and technological development of the era. The artists then moved westward in search of more pristine nature. .
Recommended publications
  • Hudson River School
    Hudson River School 1796 1800 1801 1805 1810 Asher 1811 Brown 1815 1816 Durand 1820 Thomas 1820 1821 Cole 1823 1823 1825 John 1826 Frederick 1827 1827 1827 1830 Kensett 1830 Robert 1835 John S Sanford William Duncanson David 1840 Gifford Casilear Johnson Jasper 1845 1848 Francis Frederic Thomas 1850 Cropsey Edwin Moran Worthington Church Thomas 1855 Whittredge Hill 1860 Albert 1865 Bierstadt 1870 1872 1875 1872 1880 1880 1885 1886 1910 1890 1893 1908 1900 1900 1908 1908 1902 Compiled by Malcolm A Moore Ph.D. IM Rocky Cliff (1857) Reynolds House Museum of American Art The Beeches (1845) Metropolitan Museum of Art Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886) Kindred Spirits (1862) Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art The Fountain of Vaucluse (1841) Dallas Museum of Art View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm - the Oxbow. (1836) Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas Cole (1801-48) Distant View of Niagara Falls (1836) Art Institute of Chicago Temple of Segesta with the Artist Sketching (1836) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston John William Casilear (1811-1893) John Frederick Kensett (1816-72) Lake George (1857) Metropolitan Museum of Art View of the Beach at Beverly, Massachusetts (1869) Santa Barbara Museum of Art David Johnson (1827-1908) Natural Bridge, Virginia (1860) Reynolda House Museum of American Art Lake George (1869) Metropolitan Museum of Art Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910) Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900) Indian Encampment (1870-76) Terra Foundation for American Art Starrucca Viaduct, Pennsylvania (1865) Toledo Museum of Art Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) Robert S Duncanson (1821-1902) Whiteface Mountain from Lake Placid (1866) Smithsonian American Art Museum On the St.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Cole Thomas Cole Was Recognized As the “Father
    Thomas Cole Thomas Cole was recognized as the “father of the Hudson River School of painting and hence one of the figures most directly involved in the development of a native tradition of American art...” He was “considered by his contemporaries the leading landscape painter in America...” Thomas Cole was born on February 1, 1801, in Lancashire, England. He was seventh of eight children and the only son of James and Mary Cole. His father was a woolen manufacturer who fell on hard times. Because of this, they moved to a nearby town where Thomas was apprenticed as a calico designer and where he learned the art of engraving. He especially enjoyed walking in the countryside with his youngest sister, playing the flute, and composing poetry. He was an avid reader and became interested in the natural beauties of the North American states. Thomas’ father caught his son’s enthusiasm. He moved his family to Philadelphia where he began business as a dry goods merchant. Thomas took up the trade of wood engraving. The family was soon moved again. This time to Steubenville, Ohio, but Thomas remained in Philadelphia. Not long afterwards, he sailed to St. Eustatius in the West Indies where he made sketches of what to him was nature in a grand form of wonder and beauty. A few months later, he returned to the US and joined his father in Ohio. There he helped his father by drawing and designing patterns for wallpaper. A book offered to him by a German portrait painter gave him information on design, composition, and color.
    [Show full text]
  • The Hudson River School
    Art, Artists and Nature: The Hudson River School The landscape paintings created by the 19 th century artist known as the Hudson River School celebrate the majestic beauty of the American wilderness. Students will learn about the elements of art, early 19 th century American culture, the creative process, environmental concerns and the connections to the birth of American literature. New York State Standards: Elementary, Intermediate, and Commencement The Visual Arts – Standards 1, 2, 3, 4 Social Studies – Standards 1, 3 ELA – Standards 1, 3, 4 BRIEF HISTORY By the mid-nineteenth century, the United States was no longer the vast, wild frontier it had been just one hundred years earlier. Cities and industries determined where the wilderness would remain, and a clear shift in feeling toward the American wilderness was increasingly ruled by a new found reverence and longing for the undisturbed land. At the same time, European influences - including the European Romantic Movement - continued to shape much of American thought, along with other influences that were distinctly and uniquely American. The traditions of American Indians and their relationship with nature became a recognizable part of this distinctly American Romanticism. American writers put words to this new romantic view of nature in their works, further influencing the evolution of American thought about the natural world. It found means of expression not only in literature, but in the visual arts as well. A focus on the beauty of the wilderness became the passion for many artists, the most notable came to be known as the Hudson River School Artists. The Hudson River School was a group of painters, who between 1820s and the late nineteenth century, established the first true tradition of landscape painting in the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • John Frederick Kensett Papers
    John Frederick Kensett papers Archives of American Art 750 9th Street, NW Victor Building, Suite 2200 Washington, D.C. 20001 https://www.aaa.si.edu/services/questions https://www.aaa.si.edu/ Table of Contents Collection Overview ........................................................................................................ 1 Administrative Information .............................................................................................. 1 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 1 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 2 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 2 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 2 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 2 Biographical / Historical.................................................................................................... 1 Names and Subjects ...................................................................................................... 2 Container Listing ...................................................................................................... John Frederick Kensett papers AAA.kensjohn Collection Overview Repository: Archives of American Art Title:
    [Show full text]
  • SEEING AMERICA: Jonas Lie's Morning on the River, Ca. 1911-12
    SEEING AMERICA: Jonas Lie’s Morning on the River, ca. 1911-12 orning on the River celebrates the energy and beauty of an urbanizing America Min the early twentieth century. Jonas Lie (1880 – 1940) Morning on the River, ca. 1911-1912 Oil on canvas Gift of Ruth Sibley Gade in memory of James G. Averell, 13.6 Collection of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester The Art By 1912 New York scenes were an established genre in American art, and the Brooklyn Bridge was often portrayed as the twentieth-century symbol of America’s prowess. Jonas Lie’s dramatic portrayal juxtaposes the powerful bulk of the bridge with the brilliant morning light reflecting off the icy East River in a drama of humankind versus nature. The modern cityscape has replaced the untamed wilderness as a symbol of America’s progress. One writer claimed upon seeing Morning on the River that Lie’s “brush gives new poetry to modern urban life and aspiration, and fresh power and significance to latter-day industrial effort” (Seeing America, 169). Jonas Lie was also influenced by New York artists of the Ashcan School, evident in his presentation of the bridge from the vantage point of laborers. The great bridge had more conventionally been celebrated for its powerful technological and aesthetic properties. In Lie’s version, the dark irregular forms of the sheds and machinery of the workers present us with a dis- Glossary tinctly unglamorous view of New York City. Yet Lie chooses to focus on Early 20th century group of the structure and mood of the scene rather than on individual persons, as Ashcan School: American painters who portrayed scenes of ur- other Ashcan artists might have done.
    [Show full text]
  • Early Paintings by Frederic Edwin Church
    Bibliography for The American Landscape's "Quieter Spirit": Early Paintings by Frederic Edwin Church Books and a bibliography of additional sources are available in the Reading Room of the Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library (SAM, Downtown). Avery, Kevin J. and Kelly, Franklin. Hudson River School visions: the landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Carr, Gerald L. and Harvey, Eleanor Jones. The voyage of the icebergs: Frederic Church's arctic masterpiece (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). _____. Frederic Edwin Church: the icebergs (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1980). _____. In search of the promised land: paintings by Frederic Edwin Church (New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., 2000). Cock, Elizabeth. The influence of photography on American landscape painting 1839- 1880 (Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services [dissertation], 1967). Driscoll, John Paul et al. John Frederick Kensett: an American master (New York: Worcester Art Museum, 1985). Fels, Thomas Weston. Fire & ice : treasures from the photographic collection of Frederic Church at Olana (New York: Dahesh Museum of Art; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). Glauber, Carole. Witch of Kodakery: the photography of Myra Albert Wiggins, 1869- 1956 (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1997). Harmon, Kitty. The Pacific Northwest landscape: a painted history (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2001). Hendricks, Gordon. Albert Bierstadt: painter of the American West (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1974). Howat, John K. The Hudson River and its painters (New York: Viking Press, 1972). Huntington, David C. The landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: vision of an American era (New York: G.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report 1995
    19 9 5 ANNUAL REPORT 1995 Annual Report Copyright © 1996, Board of Trustees, Photographic credits: Details illustrated at section openings: National Gallery of Art. All rights p. 16: photo courtesy of PaceWildenstein p. 5: Alexander Archipenko, Woman Combing Her reserved. Works of art in the National Gallery of Art's collec- Hair, 1915, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1971.66.10 tions have been photographed by the department p. 7: Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinello's This publication was produced by the of imaging and visual services. Other photographs Farewell to Venice, 1797/1804, Gift of Robert H. and Editors Office, National Gallery of Art, are by: Robert Shelley (pp. 12, 26, 27, 34, 37), Clarice Smith, 1979.76.4 Editor-in-chief, Frances P. Smyth Philip Charles (p. 30), Andrew Krieger (pp. 33, 59, p. 9: Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon in His Study, Editors, Tarn L. Curry, Julie Warnement 107), and William D. Wilson (p. 64). 1812, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.15 Editorial assistance, Mariah Seagle Cover: Paul Cezanne, Boy in a Red Waistcoat (detail), p. 13: Giovanni Paolo Pannini, The Interior of the 1888-1890, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon Pantheon, c. 1740, Samuel H. Kress Collection, Designed by Susan Lehmann, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National 1939.1.24 Washington, DC Gallery of Art, 1995.47.5 p. 53: Jacob Jordaens, Design for a Wall Decoration (recto), 1640-1645, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, Printed by Schneidereith & Sons, Title page: Jean Dubuffet, Le temps presse (Time Is 1875.13.1.a Baltimore, Maryland Running Out), 1950, The Stephen Hahn Family p.
    [Show full text]
  • The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art Receives the Extraordinary American Art Collection of Theodore E
    March 9, 2021 CONTACT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Emily Sujka Cell: (407) 907-4021 Office: (407) 645-5311, ext. 109 [email protected] The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art Receives the Extraordinary American Art Collection of Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. and Susan Cragg Stebbins Note to Editors: Attached is a high-resolution image of Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. and Susan Cragg Stebbins. Images of several paintings in the gift are available via this Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7d3r2vyp4nyftmi/AABg2el2ZCP180SIEX2GTcFTa?dl=0. WINTER PARK, FL—Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. and Susan Cragg Stebbins have given their outstanding collection of American art to The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida. The couple have made their gift in honor of Mrs. Stebbins’s parents, Evelyn and Henry Cragg, longtime residents of Winter Park. Mr. Cragg was a member of the Charles Homer Morse Foundation board of trustees from its founding in 1976 until his death in 1988. It is impossible to think about American art scholarship, museum culture, and collecting without the name Theodore Stebbins coming to mind. Stebbins has had an illustrious career as a professor of art history and as curator at the Yale University Art Gallery (1968–77), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1977–2000), and the Harvard Art Museums (2001–14). Many of Stebbins’s former students occupy positions of importance throughout the art world. Among his numerous publications are his broad survey of American works on paper, American Master Drawings and Watercolors: A History of Works on Paper from Colonial Times to the Present (1976), and his definitive works on American painter Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904) including the Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade (2000).
    [Show full text]
  • Read Book American Wilderness the Story of the Hudson River School
    AMERICAN WILDERNESS THE STORY OF THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL OF PAINTING 1ST EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Kevin J Avery | 9781883789572 | | | | | American Wilderness The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting 1st edition PDF Book Here, he painted many of his Hudson River School works of art, eventually marrying the niece of Cedar Grove's owner and relocating to the area permanently. In a period of six years, Reed had assembled a significant collection of European and American art, which he displayed in a two- room gallery in his lower Manhattan home on Greenwich Street. SKU Morse In , Cole, then a calico designer, had a cordial meeting with Doughty, in Philadelphia, and the men encouraged each other to follow their aesthetic interest. In retrospect the main benefit to Cole of returning to England was seeing paintings by J. One of the uncles, Alexander Thomson, continued ownership, and the Coles shared living space with the Thomson family. Artists with a connection to these places:. Sign In. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree However, recognition of the key roles of these early Hudson River painters in our fine-art heritage is increasing. Members included William Cullen Bryant , prominent literary figure, and historical-genre painter Samuel S. An American art journal called The Crayon, published between and , reinforced the Hudson River School painters and promoted the idea that nature was a healing place for the human spirit.
    [Show full text]
  • Lackawanna Valley
    MAN and the NATURAL WORLD: ROMANTICISM (Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting) NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING Online Links: Thomas Cole – Wikipedia Hudson River School – Wikipedia Frederic Edwin Church – Wikipedia Cole's Oxbow – Smarthistory Cole's Oxbow (Video) – Smarthistory Church's Niagara and Heart of the Andes - Smarthistory Thomas Cole. The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm), 1836, oil on canvas Thomas Cole (1801-1848) was one of the first great professional landscape painters in the United States. Cole emigrated from England at age 17 and by 1820 was working as an itinerant portrait painter. With the help of a patron, he traveled to Europe between 1829 and 1832, and upon his return to the United States he settled in New York and became a successful landscape painter. He frequently worked from observation when making sketches for his paintings. In fact, his self-portrait is tucked into the foreground of The Oxbow, where he stands turning back to look at us while pausing from his work. He is executing an oil sketch on a portable easel, but like most landscape painters of his generation, he produced his large finished works in the studio during the winter months. Cole painted this work in the mid- 1830s for exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York. He considered it one of his “view” paintings because it represents a specific place and time. Although most of his other view paintings were small, this one is monumentally large, probably because it was created for exhibition at the National Academy.
    [Show full text]
  • An Eye for Landscapes That Transcend Nature,” the New York Times, May 22, 2009
    Genocchio, Benjamin. “An Eye for Landscapes That Transcend Nature,” The New York Times, May 22, 2009. An Eye for Landscapes That Transcend Nature One’s lasting impression of the April Gornik exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington is the sheer virtuosity of the pictures. They glow with mystery and grandeur. Landscape painting of this quality is not often seen on Long Island. Assembled by Kenneth Wayne, the museum’s chief curator, the show focuses on the artist’s powerful, large-scale oil paintings. There are a dozen pictures, created roughly from the late 1980s to the present, nicely displayed in two of the Heckscher’s newly renovated galleries. The removal of a false ceiling in them has allowed the museum to accommodate much larger works than it could before. New Horizons. The large-scale oil paintings by April Gornik on display at the Heckscher include “Sun Storm Sea” (2005). At 56, Ms. Gornik is already a painter of eminence. She has had shows around the world, and her work is in several major museum collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. I would place her among the top landscape artists working in America today. That this is Ms. Gornik’s first major solo exhibition on Long Island in more than 15 years seems an oversight, especially given that she lives part of the year in Suffolk County. But better late than never, for there are probably dozens of artists living and working on Long Island who are deserving of shows.
    [Show full text]
  • A Call to the Wild
    Q UESTROYAL F INE A RT, LLC A Call to the Wild Thomas Moran John Frederick Kensett Evening Clouds, 1902 New England Coastal Scene with Figures, 1864 Oil on canvas Oil on canvas 141/8 x 20 inches 141/4 x 243/16 inches Monogrammed, inscribed, and dated Monogrammed and dated lower right: JF.K. / ’64. lower left: TMORAN / N.A. / 1902” March 8 – 30, 2019 An Exhibition and Sale A Call to the Wild Louis M. Salerno, Owner Brent L. Salerno, Co-Owner Chloe Heins, Director Nina Sangimino, Assistant Director Ally Chapel, Senior Administrator Megan Gatton, Gallery Coordinator Pavla Berghen-Wolf, Research Associate Will Asencio, Art Handler Rita J. Walker, Controller Photography by Timothy Pyle, Light Blue Studio and Ally Chapel Q UESTROYAL F INE A RT, LLC 903 Park Avenue (at 79th Street), Third Floor, New York, NY 10075 :(212) 744-3586 :(212) 585-3828 : Monday–Friday 10–6, Saturday 10–5 and by appointment : gallery@questroyalfineart.com www.questroyalfineart.com A Call to the Wild Those of us who acquire Hudson River School paintings will of composition, in the application of brushstroke, in texture, in possess something more than great works of art. Each is a perspective, in tone and color, each artist creates a unique visual glimpse of our native land, untouched by man. These paintings language. They have left us a painted poetry that required a compel us to contemplate, they draw us beyond the boundaries combination of imagination and extraordinary technical ability. of a time and space that define our present lives so that we may The magnitude of the artistic achievement of this first American consider eternal truths.
    [Show full text]