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"The great
cultural project of the 19th century was to explore
the relations between man and nature, to learn to see
nature as the fingerprint of God's creation . . . No
previous age had brought such passionate scrutiny to
nature, from the highest Alp to the smallest pollen
of grain . . ." |
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Robert Hughes, American
Visions (1997) |
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| Hudson River School |
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The Hudson
River School began in 1825 with the paintings of
Thomas
Cole. Artists like Cole, Asher
Durand, and Thomas
Doughty set about to heed Ralph Waldo Emerson's
call "to ignore the courtly Muses of Europe"
and define a distinct vision of America. Wilderness
was something that Europe no longer possessed—it
was uniquely American. These artists painted grandiose
and detailed panoramas of the Hudson Valley and New
England filled with awe and optimism often combined
with a moral message. Human beings were minuscule in
these vast compositions, but were nevertheless in harmony
with nature. By the 1850's, there was a new generation
of Hudson River School artists including Albert
Bierstadt, John
Casilear, Jasper
Cropsey, Frederic
Church, Sanford
Gifford, Martin
Heade, George
Inness, John
Kensett, Thomas
Moran, and Worthington
Whittredge. Many of these artists explored the American
West and even traveled to South America. The colors
and magnificence of Moran's "The
Great Canyon of the Yellowstone" (1872) and photos
of William Jackson created such excitement that the
area was declared the first national park in 1872. Bierstadt's
"Domes of Yosemite" (1867) helped to convince Congress
to establish a second national park in 1890. By the
1870's, impressionism and the Barbizon school supplanted
interest in American landscape painting. Visit the paintings
of the Hudson River School at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art, Corcoran
Gallery of Art, Hudson
River Museum, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, National
Gallery of Art, New
York Historical Society, and Smithsonian
American Art Museum. |
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