Speed Art Museum

© John Nation 1998

Louisville, KY

302-634-2700

http://www.speedmuseum.org

Art & Nature: The Hudson River School

The exhibition "Art & Nature: The Hudson River School" is scheduled to open at The Speed Art Museum on June 27 and extend through August 27, 2000. "Art & Nature" offers 27 beautiful landscapes representing all the major artists associated with America's first school of landscape painting, the Hudson River School. The exhibition was organized by the Albany Institute of History & Art in Albany, New York, and has been circulated to seven museums across the United States by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services of Kansas City, Missouri. (left: Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), 1845, An Old Man's Reminiscences, oil on canvas)

The Hudson River School is a term applied to a group of American artists working in the mid-nineteenth century whose paintings stemmed from their pride in and their desire to capture the beauty of American landscape. Not a school in the traditional sense of the word, the Hudson River School instead was a loosely organized group of artists who shared a style and an attitude toward landscape painting.

Two of the earliest and most important among the Hudson River painters were Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, who chose as their subjects the landscape surrounding New York's Hudson River, the Catskill Mountains, and other remote and untouched wilderness areas. In 1855, Durand, a theorist and leader of the group, published a series of "letters" to an imaginary student in which he outlined the aesthetic principles that guided the Hudson River School painters--the direct study of nature, the use of preparatory studies made out of doors, and the execution of carefully conceived paintings that captured the majesty of the American landscape. Today, paintings by members of the Hudson River School are admired for their dramatic depictions of nature, with subjects ranging from sublime views of wilderness to pastoral scenes and allegorical pictures with moral messages. At the height of the movement, paintings were often intended to celebrate the presence of God in nature. In keeping with the tenets of Romanticism, these artists saw the natural American environment as a source of divine expression. This exhibition focuses on the changing meaning of Hudson River School paintings over time. (left: Sanford R. Gifford (1823-1880), Mount Merino and the City of Hudson in Autumn, c. 1851-52, oil on canvas)

In addition to Cole and Durand, the exhibition features works by Frederic Edwin Church , Jasper F. Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, James McDougal Hart, William M. Hart, John Frederick Kensett, Homer Dodge Martin, David Johnson, John William Casilear and George Inness.

Ed.: Enjoy pictures of Hudson River School paintings via the Desmond-Fish Library, and details including biographies, auction records, museum holdings, top dealers, book and magazine references on over 70 Hudson River School artists courtesy of AskArt.com

Please Note: RLM does not endorse sites behind external links. We offer them for your additional research; external links were chosen on the basis of being the most informative online source at the time of our search.

Read more about the Speed Art Museum in Resource Library Magazine

Be sure to visit more of Resource Library Magazine with museum exhibition news, stories on American art, calendars, and more. Here are links to selected sections of the magazine:

• Feature articles indexed by date of publication, from 1997 to the present
• Articles concerning art museums, indexed by institution name in alphabetical order
• Articles concerning non-profit art organizations other than museums, indexed by name of organization in alphabetical order
• Feature articles indexed by subject and media - over three dozen mini-magazines
• Sources of articles indexed by state within the United States
• Calendar of art museum exhibitions, current and future years
• Milestones, including appointments, new buildings, etc.
• Appraisals, authentication, conservation and artist identification for original art and reproductions
• Columnists: Ann Avery Andres, Sarah Beserra, Roger Dunbier and Ann Erskine
• Art sellers' showcase and sponsorships
• Books, magazines, videos and more
• Cameos of historic American art collections
• Distinguished artists, including an alphabetical index of over 2,000 deceased American artists
• Magazine table of contents
• User agreement
• Editorial policies
• Advertising and sponsorship options

Copyright 1996-2000 Traditional Fine Art Online, Inc. All rights reserved.

• Links to to other TFAOI.COM divisions.