Painters From Hudson Valley: Artists That Made A Difference
Attending any Art Show you can find plenty of landscape paintings. Landscapes seen at Art shows are descendants of members of the Hudson River School, an art movement begun in the Victorian era of the 19th century. This period gave rise to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Wesley Powell and John Muir. The conservation movement was just beginning. The Hudson Valley was being settled, wilderness falling under the plow. Some artists, aware of the changing land started painting the natural world around them, bringing landscapes to a new prominence in art.
The founding member of the original school was Thomas Cole. Some of his more popular works “The Voyage of Life” (painted twice) and “Course of Empire” are a series of paintings with themes of mans relationship to nature over time. These are some of his most allegorical works. Yet Cole is most notably connected with the Hudson River School. Having relocated to the Catskills, Cole often captured on canvas the beautiful Hudson Valley. With his canvases depicting Romanticism and Naturalism, Cole aspired to create a new form of landscape paintings. protégée. Church’s paintings of “Niagara” and “Ice Bergs of the North” drew vast crowds, and garnered much attention. Inspired, some artists started portraying Landscapes heavily influenced by Cole, Church and Asher Durand. The Hudson River School was born and an art movement began.
It was an era of exploration and settling of the west. Some of the members of the Hudson River School traveled through the country, transferring to canvas the sights before them. Albert Bierstadt and William Bradford where two such painters. Bierstadt and Bradford both visited Yosemite. Bierstadt put to canvas “Cathedral Rock” and “Yosemite”. William Bradford, painted fiery “Sunset in the Yosemite Valley”. Paintings such as these brought the value
Thomas Moran was also a Hudson River School painter, and like many of its members viewed landscapes as the highest art form and a religious experience because it was capturing “God’s Handiwork”. This concept of nature was a budding concept shared by Emerson, Thoreau and many others, including John Muir who wrote “God’s First Temples-How Shall We Preserve Our Forests” in 1876. About this time Moran participated in one of the first expeditions into the Yellowstone Mountains. Moran’s work contributed to the movement that resulted in Yellowstone becoming the first National Park.
Creative works can alter history. Photographs, paintings and the images and ideas the written word evokes in a reader can influence the course of a nation. Members of the Hudson River School movement captured the reverence they felt for nature and helped relay that feeling to the public and its leaders. These artists participated in the preservation of this country’s wild spaces.