Inspiring Nature: The Birth and Influence of the Hudson River School

Let's dive into the heart of American artistic history and discover the Hudson River School, the very first pictorial movement to be born on American soil. Born from the inspiration and brush of Thomas Cole, this exclusively American and informal movement offers an unprecedented immersion in the artistic panorama of the New World. Let's explore the captivating history of this essential movement and its legendary founder.

There are two main generations of artists in this movement. The first generation of artists focused on the Hudson River Valley and its surroundings in the Northeastern United States. They saw nature as the manifestation of beauty, divine goodness and God. This generation of artists died with Thomas Cole, in 1848, of whom he is the most prominent representative. His works remain among the most famous of the movement, and his main and most daring work, The Course of Life, consists of 4 paintings and the references to God, life and especially earthly life are omnipresent.

The second generation diversified the landscapes repres ented, going as far as the Rockies, South America and sometimes even Europe. They are the ones who have deepened the play of lights and atmospheres. Their idea of beauty is similar, and they pushed the representation and the divine parallel a notch higher. This is the generation of Durand, Church, Bierstadt or Moran.

This artistic movement comes from Romanticism, which is characterized by individualism, sentimentality and a strong spirituality in the paintings. The Hudson River School differs from Romanticism by its absence of individuality (only landscapes are represented) and by a stronger continuity towards spirituality. The play of light, which was later perpetuated by the current of Luminism through A. Bierstadt, accentuates the level of spirituality. Indeed, nature takes an almost divine place in the paintings, and the light systematically directed from top to bottom marks a hierarchy within each painting between the immense, divine, almost intimidating Nature and the subjects represented who give life to the paintings, but who remain in the minority, small, crushed by the grandiose landscapes. An example of such a painting can be A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt.Rosalie, or Among the Sierra Nevada, California, both by Albert Bierstadt.

American landscapes have inspired many painters independently of each other. Indeed, this artistic movement is informal and the style unspoken, the artists did not know each other particularly well and their work was not recognized by their peers at the time. It was not until the 1960's that this movement gained popularity and that the history of this movement could be made.

Nevertheless, it remains a movement of great influence, and its effects have had positive consequences in the United States and throughout the world. One of the greatest benefits of this movement was the influence that the realistic depiction of grand landscapes had on the creation of the first natural parks in the world. Yosemite Valley and Yellowstone Park were the first two natural parks in the world, and they influenced the creation of other natural parks in the United States as well as in Europe and in the world. These first two parks were created thanks to the general vision created by the paintings of Thomas Moran with his painting Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone or Thomas Hill with his work View of Yosemite Valley. In his effort to inform the public, Thomas Cole’s labors are among those that motivated the creation of the National Park Service.

The artists of this artistic movement are not well known. They are not well known, but they have a huge influence on art, art history, the environment, and the world. Durand, Cole and Morse (the inventor of the code of the same name) created the Academy of Fine Arts in the United States. The overall contribution of artists and art in general to our world is too often underestimated. Let's give it back its value.

Fahim Bounoua

Sources:

Kevin J. Avery. (2004, January 1st). The Hudson River School. The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (1998, 20th July). Hudson River school | American art movement. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Kiely, A. (2022). The Hudson River School : American Art and Early Environmentalism. TheCollector.