In the early 1800s, the natural splendor and proximity of the upper Hudson River Valley served as an ideal tourist’s retreat for the new middle-class population of a burgeoning New York City, just a few miles to the south. By newly-invented steamboat (also a Hudson River first) and train, they came in search of the wonders of nature described in the literature and poetry of America’s new literary class. But, they came for more– they came in search of the native character and sense of place that could define them as ‘Americans’. The first Catskill mountain resort appeared in 1824 and a nascent group of painters, plying their trade as portraitists and engravers in the city, soon discovered the rich potential for dramatic subject matter that the river and its surrounding mountains offered. Fine Arts Magazine

Prior to the 1820s, American painting largely focused on popular themes, including portraits, Biblical motifs and allegorical scenes based on ancient history. Romanticism in all its artistic forms was flourishing in Europe. But, the newly-formed United States—apart from the traditional painterly themes noted above–was still reveling in the images of the Revolution, as skillfully represented in the manneristically heroic and detailed style of John Trumbull. (look for his portrait of Jefferson on a 10-dollar bill!)

Trumbull founded the Academy of Fine Arts in New York (1816), but several years later it was subsumed into the National Academy of Design (1825), created by his rival and fellow painter, Samuel F.B. Morse (a skilled artist, best known for his invention of the telegraph and Morse Code). New Jersey engraver, Robert Durand was invited to teach painting at the Academy. Coincidentally, Thomas Cole, English-born and trained as an artist in Philadelphia, came to the Hudson Valley in search of the idylls so vividly described in the words of fellow-Englishmen, like poet, Percy Shelly. His early efforts as a landscape painter came to the attention of Trumbull, and then Durand and, together with William Cullen Bryant, the poet, the core group of what would later be known as the Hudson River School of painters, was created (but not known by that name until 1875, when the term was derisively coined by a newspaper critic).

Numerous painting expeditions by this small, but growing, group of artists up the Hudson River to a point just below Albany where it narrows, yielded a body of work that embraced certain distinctive features—elements ‘colored’ by a number of factors unique to the time and for these artists, in particular. They shared a belief that these natural wonders as well as other splendid vistas around the world would soon disappear in the face of metropolitan expansion and industrialization. As a result, they approached their task with a certain missionary zeal.

They sought to capture a grandeur and magnificence in nature untamed; the result of God’s loving and creative hand here in North America and proof of His Divine Providence—evidence, through nature’s wonders, of our manifest destiny as a People. They infused their paintings with light and color that drew attention to eternal cycles of nature that had persisted for eons before man’s arrival on the scene; they diminished the presence of the human figure in their panoramic views by portraying him as a small, insignificant player in a grand and powerful natural drama; they often used light and colorful sunsets/sunrises to symbolize divine oversight of dramatic natural settings that had been placed into man’s hands for safe-keeping (a veiled warning for the future); and they often painted on a grand scale, using massive canvases and even larger, ornate frames to capture the immensity of the natural world, providing the viewer with a ‘you-are-there’ experience. The pure scale and mastery of paint and perspective made many of the works by the Hudson River artists the visual and experiential event of a lifetime for those who might pay a fee to view a single, large work, complete with decorative palms set to either side to help set the scene. America’s new cultural vitality had now been captured on canvas.

“For Cole, Church, Durand, Cropsey and others, portraying such subjects as cascading falls, violent cataracts, florid sunsets, placid bays and towering mountainscapes in large scale was typical. These works offered the viewer a unique, spiritual bond with nature and The Creator. Capturing the sense of ‘the Sublime’, or a direct connection to God and His greatness through the rendering of their subject matter was a key to the success of the work for these painters,” Phagen described, as we stood in front of her favorite piece, an immaculately detailed and colorful work by Frederic Church, entitled, Autumn in North America, 1856. “This treatment of the landscape was not a first—the English landscape was being interpreted by writer William Gilpin and others in the late 18th and early 19th century for its picturesque aesthetic. The focus here, however, was to create visually awe-inspiring works; paintings that would take your breath away. But, at the core, the focus was always on the individual painter. His personal perspective on any subject would have been informed by his roots in European art and travel and his unique approach to looking at the world”, she tells me.

Asher Durand (1796-1886)

A skilled engraver by trade, New Jersey-born Durand moved to New York at the urging of painter, John Trumbull to join the company of Thomas Cole and others to take up landscape painting in earnest. Supported in his efforts by a wealthy patron and already over 40 (middle-aged by 19th century standards), Durand made the Grand Tour of Europe in 1840-41 with other landscape painters to continue to hone his skills as a painter. While considered one of the founding members of the Hudson River School, a skilled portraitist and president of the famed National Academy of Design for sixteen years, Durand’s paintings never achieved the mastery of composition and technical exuberance of Cole, Church or the other well-known painters of the genre. His most famous work is that which pictures the prematurely-deceased Thomas Cole and the literary giant of the period, William Cullen Bryant standing on a ledge overlooking their beloved Catskills. In this memorial piece, entitled, Kindred Spirits (1849) [see below], Durand captures the poignancy of the loss of his friend and mentor, Thomas Cole. But, through the work, helps to solidify the Hudson River movement as an integral part of the American cultural scene, anchored as it was, in the vision of these two cultural luminaries.

Thomas Cole (1801-1848)

Cole is considered the principle founder of the Hudson River School of painting. After making several trips to the Catskill region, in 1827, he established a studio and temporary residence at Cedar Grove, in the town of Catskill, NY, convincing Durand and others to join him on outings there. Nine years later, he would marry the niece of the owner of the house and make it this his permanent residence. Using this location as a base, he and his colleagues, Sanford Gifford, Asher Durand and a favorite student, Frederic Church, would venture out into the hills and valleys of the surrounding mountains to paint what they saw there.

Cole, a deeply religious man, portrayed nature as a romanticized setting, viewing man in a diminished station, standing in awe of the grand panorama. This view of the world around him was both poetic and rendered in a style that captured an ideal harmony between man and nature in an Edenic world. Cole’s view of the wilderness and the noble demeanor of the Indians often appearing in his works were almost certainly colored by his reading of Cooper’s, Last of the Mohegans. In Cole’s interpretation of the world around him, he expressed the common bond that exists among all of humanity and our ultimate ties to the natural world. This romantic view of the ‘Family of Man’, for Cole and other early proponents of the Hudson River School, would prove more allegorical and fanciful with the passage of time, as the signs of commercialization and industrialization of their pristine landscapes were spreading rapidly (the railroad, particularly, became a poignant symbol in Cole’s scenes for man’s encroachment on natural surroundings). Other works he completed during his brief life (he died suddenly at age 47) also bore credence to his personal convictions about the pantheistic and moralistic stage on which man’s tenuous drama with the forces of nature would play out. His skillful use of light and shadow, his placement of solitary figures in a grand landscape and his rich atmospherics all served to reinforce his belief in, and representation of, “all that is glorious around us.”

Frederic E. Church (1826-1900)

Church’s prodigious output over the course of his lifetime clearly establishes his as one of the giants in the field of the Hudson River painting genre. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he became a student of Thomas Cole at the age of eighteen (from 1844-46). By age twenty-three, he was already a member of the prestigious New York City-based, National Academy of Design. Church’s talent was apparent from the beginning of his career, with even his earliest works garnering him praise and attention from critics and patrons alike. By any standard, The artist rose to prominence early on and enjoyed a reputation as one of the most skilled interpreters of the natural environment of his day.

First as a student-artist and then, as his work matured technically, Church traveled from his home and studio in New York City to the hills and ravines of the Hudson River to sketch and paint time-and-again. After his acceptance to the Academy, his travels widened and, by 1851, his painting, New England Scenery, shown at their spring art exhibition, fetched a record price and critical acclaim. Widening his scope of interests, Church traveled to South America, Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1850s, bringing back studies and notes that would serve as the basis for a series of large canvases that depicted exotic and little-known scenes, ranging from simmering volcanoes to dense jungle foliage to heaps of ice on frozen seas. His pièce de résistance was a dramatic, 1857 depiction of Niagara Falls (then a common, if not overly-developed tourist destination), where the viewer is held, as if suspended over the turbulent deep-green water’s edge, as the falls froth and tumble into the foam-filled chasm far below. A rainbow hovers overhead, signaling the presence of the sacred in nature and demonstrating Church’s uncanny eye for creating lush atmospherics with paint. Exhibited as a single work throughout the U.S. and in London, thousands paid the admission price of $.50 to stand before the painting and experience the power of the Falls and the mastery of Church’s painting skills.

He followed this with another masterpiece, this time depicting the verdant forests and snow-capped peaks of Ecuador, in his, The Heart of the Andes (1859). Church completed it at the age of thirty-three and was already internationally-known, 12,000 people went to see this painting in just three weeks, while it was on exhibit in New York.

But, his greatest masterpiece was yet to be completed as his life was about to change in unexpected ways.

In 1859, at the showing of his Andes painting, he met and soon married Isabel (Carnes) Church. Having lived the bachelor’s life for several years, he then gave up his New York rented-apartment life (though maintaining his studio, first at the American Art-Union and then at the Tenth Street Studio Building, for another thirty years) and sought property in his beloved Catskills. His search led him back to land that he had visited and loved as a student, with a commanding view of the Hudson. Here, the flow of the river slows by a bend, creating a widening, lake-like area called, Inbocht Bay. This ‘bend in the river’ would be immortalized, as it served as subject-matter for endless renderings by Church and other artists in the years to come.

Directly across the river from one-time mentor, Thomas Cole’s, Cedar Grove property and within proximity of many of the landmarks made famous in the paintings of Cole, Church, Durand and others, Church acquired several parcels in the years spanning 1860-1867, culminating in the choice summit parcel, offering a panoramic view of the river in both directions as well as the distant mountains to the west.

He then departed on an extended, 18-month trip to Europe and the Middle East with his wife, son and mother-in-law. While there, he produced hundreds of oil studies and drawings and discovered an architectural heritage that would significantly influence planning for the main house on his property, once he returned home to Hudson, New York. In his travels, Church not only took in the visual wonders of the ancient world, the castles of Europe and its scenic rivers but he also acquired hundreds of artifacts that would later adorn his home on the river.

Once back in America, Church retained the services of architect, Calvert Vaux (who co-created Central Park with Frederick Law Olmstead) to create a magnificent home in the Moorish style that had so impressed him during his travels. Made from rock blasted for the foundation and local brick from the nearby town of Hudson, the finished house– exotic in its visage but practical for a large family and staff– offered commanding views of the river and mountains from the windows, observation tower, veranda and porches on three sides.

Church considered Olana his tour de force and during his life, planted several thousand trees on the 250 acres he ultimately owned. “Church considered this to be a three-dimensional canvas on which he could paint the details of the house and the surrounding countryside”, Curator, Valerie Balint explained to me. “By the time construction was nearing completion in the 1870s, Church was no longer able to work on large-scale paintings due to his severe arthritis. Olana served as his last and ultimate creation…a painting come to life.”

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Second Generation: The Tonalists

It is in the nature of an historical artistic retrospective to place distinct boundaries around ‘schools’ or movements. By the mid-nineteenth century, a new style of painting was appearing to supplant the Hudson River movement. Known as the Tonalists, many of the same artists who had shaped a reputation for themselves as first-generation Hudson River painters were being influenced by the tempered brush strokes and idyllic scenes of the French Barbizon School of painting. With its focus on well-ordered, pastoral scenes, a mood of intense quietness or stillness, neatly divided canvases with balanced parts– sky, middle ground and fore-ground– and finished works without visible brush strokes or other evidence of the artist’s hand, the Tonalists now portrayed nature as non-threatening and controlled—no longer man’s awesome adversary, but a benign backdrop to a new, more secure American way-of-life. Tonalism introduced a new, refined sensibility to American landscape painting.

Tonalism was really just an extension of earlier efforts to capture nature, but with the moderating effects of European formalist influences (principally, the French École and Symbolism) and perhaps a touch of timidity not found in the bold work of the first generation of Hudson River painters. Many of the Hudson River artists went on to paint, ‘tonally’ and many of these Tonalist painters completed works in other styles. Frederic Church, one of the founders of the Hudson River School, has some of his later works grouped with the Tonalists. Other well-known painters in this later period were George Inness, Jasper Cropsey, John Frederick Kensett, Martin Heade and Sanford Robinson Gifford.

It is best to consider Tonalism an ‘influence’, rather than a major movement. When compared to the drama and sweeping visual excitement of the Hudson School, Tonalism’s contribution was solid though modest, indeed. But, even this renewal of familiar themes with a slightly different twist was not enough to sustain the Hudson River School of painting and its variations in the public eye. Its remarkable 50+-year run was unprecedented in the emerging world of ‘modern’ art. But, it eventually lost ground to the inevitable march of civilization and scientific advances: the newly-invented camera offered images that could equally amaze and entertain; the vast American west was made accessible by train, affording vistas that further sparked our natural (and national!) curiosity about the unknown and the unfamiliar and Charles Darwin’s recently published book on the origin of the species (1859) cast doubt in the minds of many about the divinely preordained march of the natural world toward order and greater perfection.

The Hudson River—the river of natural wonders—had now lost much of its luster for the emerging middle class, who flocked to America’s Far West, taking in the splendor of exotic destinations like the Colorado Rockies, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.

But, Tonalism enjoyed a period of popular appeal from approximately 1860-1875 (some would extend the period into the early 20th century). While it could claim genuine American roots however, it would soon pale by comparison with the quintessentially American art sensation that was about to follow!

Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and the ex-patriot, James McNeill Whistler (himself part of the Tonalist movement) ushered in a third generation of authentically American painters when they arrived on the scene in the last quarter of the 19th century. Master mark-makers, all, they would change the face of American art: centralizing and moving the human figure into the foreground and replacing the drama once found in the landscapes of Hudson River genre with human pathos and representations of everyday life. They breathed vitality into the American persona and, in that gesture, expressed the essence of what it meant to be an American. Henceforth, the focus of their work would be in the mutual interplay between figure and setting, each a necessary ingredient for the other–capturing the public imagination and establishing a truly authentic style of American art at the dawn of a new century.

Conclusion

My journey began at the mouth of the Hudson and ended near its source—a reversal for sure—in the usual order of things. But, I was committed to discovering the river in the way that Henry Hudson had and to travel north from New York City in the same manner as the artists of an earlier time; so that I, too, could experience the splendor and wonders of the Hudson in much the same way as they had.

What I found along the way was a study in contrast—a co-mingling of old and new, affluent and working class neighborhoods, economic viability and time-worn towns and villages hugging the river banks and too, the ubiquitous freight trains—some as long as small towns—snaking along the river’s edge, with their lonely whistles echoing among the hills from the valley below. But, America was there in the New York accent left behind by the Dutch, the neat farms and courteous conversations of a community of people far removed from the urban pressures of the city, a few miles south and, always, the natural beauty of the river—glimpsed at every bend in the road. Here, through a complex interplay of historical events, political theater, literary conjuring and the remarkable talent of a handful of artists who developed an original American artistic style and then helped to perpetuate it for nearly a half-century, I believe our American persona was born.

Thus, the Holy Grail of at least one version of authentic America can be found in the Hudson River Valley. I would argue that it was the very first miulti-generational initiative, aimed at defining a genuine American ‘voice’, following the Revolution. Built on a foundation of Dutch and English influences of the 17th and 18th centuries (and to a lesser degree, French and Native American), the writers, poets, architects and painters of the early 19th century looked to Europe for influences and inspiration. But, ultimately, they directed their creative energy toward the development of a unique style that drew heavily on their indigenous surroundings.

Europe was replete with history. Evidence of faded civilizations and generations long-passed could be found in throughout the cities and countryside of Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. A period of rediscovery of the beauty and perfection of these ancient ruins in the mid-18th and early 19th century coincided with a series of progressive or liberal philosophical writings espousing the rights of man and a new interpretation of how universal forces may affect his future role on society. This period of, ‘Enlightenment’ borrowed heavily from the accumulated wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans, holding much of the intellectual community in its grasp on both sides of the Atlantic. This progressive trend in thought and action extended well into the second half of the 1800s.

Enlightened thinkers sought perfection in the natural universe, where balance, form and the natural order of things would inspire a search for symmetry in virtually every human creative endeavor. This classical revival triggered the Romantic movement, in reaction to the rationality and empiricism of enlightened thought, seeking instead, to express man’s more emotional human nature.

Rather than focusing on ancient ruins as a metaphor for perfection, the Hudson River School of painters broke stride and offered the natural landscape as a stage setting for the American Romantic narrative, drawing literally from the natural wonders of the New World. For an artist like Frederic Church, his monumental treatment of a subject like the Parthenon (1871) will stand as a masterful rendering of Old World classical perfection. Ultimately, though, for Church, the man-made harmony of the Parthenon would pale by comparison with his beloved Olana and the Hudson River vistas surrounding him. There, he would find beauty in the natural order of things—the God-head of nature’s own perfection.

So, for Church, Cole, Durand and the others who sought to express the transformative and redemptive powers of the natural world through their work, The Hudson and its surrounding Kaatskills were an ideal laboratory. For them, God’s creative energy was contained in the world around them—a Eucharistic offering that could be so easily sacrificed by man’s neglect, or through whose redemptive powers, He and the artist, working together, could transport the viewer to a different, higher level of emotional purity. Rather than borrowing from the classical lessons of the past, enlightenment for the Hudson River painters was symbolized in a perfected relationship with the perceived order found in the natural world.

In this thoroughly modern premise of, ‘knowledge gained in the present, through inspired observation’ lies a novel sensibility: the seeds of the American spirit and the new American identity.

The Hudson, River of Dreams, and its people are one.

by Richard Friswell, Executive Editor

Read Parts I-III in the ARTES ‘Feature Articles’ Archive