Painters From Hudson Valley: An Art Movement That Mattered
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. It was the time of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Wesley Powell and John Muir. The conservation movement was just starting. The Hudson Valley was seeing a growing population, the natural world giving way to agriculture. Some artists, aware of the changing land started painting the natural world around them, bringing landscapes front and center in the art world.
The main influence on the original school was Thomas Cole. Some of his better known 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 pieces. Yet Cole is most prominently associated 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 Cole mentored Fredric Church as a protégée. Church’s depictions of “Niagara” and “Ice Bergs of the North” drew vast crowds, and received much acclaim. Inspired, some artists started portraying Landscapes decidedly motivated by Cole, Church and Asher Durand. So started the Hudson River School and an art movement emerged.
It was a time of exploration and settling of the west. Some of the followers of the Hudson River School wandered 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. Albert Bierstadt put to canvas “Cathedral Rock” and “Yosemite”. Bradford, painted a vibrant “Sunset in the Yosemite Valley”. Paintings such as these brought the value
Thomas Moran was also a part of this new art movement, 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 view of the natural world was a growing perspective shared by Emerson, Thoreau and many others, including John Muir who wrote “God’s First Temples-How Shall We Preserve Our Forests” in 1876. During these years Moran participated in one of the first expeditions into the Yellowstone Mountains. Moran’s work supported the progress that made Yellowstone the first National Park.
Creative works can change the world. 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 painted the veneration 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.
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