Hudson River School

Asher Brown Durand , Kindred Spirits, 1849

Hudson River School is the name of a group of American landscape painters who were active in the mid-19th century and who were close to German romantic painting, particularly the Düsseldorf School of Painting , and later the Barbizon School . The subject of her pictures is the valley of the Hudson River , the Catskill Mountains , the Niagara Falls on the Canadian-American border, the Adirondack Mountains and the White Montains in New Hampshire . Her sceneries were not limited to those of the USA, but also the Andes, Jamaica and depictions of religious, ancient and literary scenes (e.g. James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans ) became the subject of her landscapes.

Thomas Cole (1801–1848) is considered to be the founder of the Hudson River School . Cole moved to New York in 1825 (at that time already the center of the American art scene) and in September and October of the same year traveled to the Catskill Mountains to paint the first depictions of this area. His colleague and friend was the landscape painter Asher Brown Durand (1796–1886). The second generation is represented by Cole's best student, Frederic Edwin Church , among others .

focus

Hudson River School art reflected three areas of 19th century America: discovery, exploration, and settlement. The paintings describe America with pastoral landscapes in which humans and nature live in harmony with one another. In their luminism, the later works show proximity to the impressionist painting of Europe. While the individual details are accurately reproduced, the images are often composed of different elements to create an ideal landscape. On adventurous and dangerous journeys, the artists collected sketches of unexplored and extreme landscapes, which were converted into pictures in the studio.

A realistic and detailed representation of nature is characteristic of the pictures of the Hudson River School. Artistic role models were European painters such as Claude Lorrain and John Constable . They shared their respect and awe for nature with contemporary American authors such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson . There are intensive links with German late romanticism . Paul Weber taught himself in Philadelphia and influenced representatives of the Hudson River School.

The works stimulated the spirit of optimism in eastern North America to explore the continent towards the west coast and had an influence on the national park movement in the USA.