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.