Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School

Selected Quotes

“Every now and then, an exhibition comes along that is so perfectly lovely that you want to shout its merits from the closest rooftop, or in this case mountain.”

— Benjamin Genocchio, The New York Times
“Glorious landscape paintings from America's first stab at a national art by Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt and others.”

— Celia McGee, The New York Daily News
“As the exhibition 'Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School' argues, the notion of an American landscape brimming with sacred sites is as much a cultural invention as an accident of nature.”

— Martha Schewendener, The New York Times
“There is no better illustration of the life cycle of a great power than The Course of Empire. . .[Cole] beautifully captured a theory of imperial rise and fall to which most people remain in thrall to this day.”

— Niall Ferguson, Council on Foreign Relations
"Magnificent paintings, still eloquently moving today."

— Augusta Magazine
"Painting the American Vision revisits a time of passionate faith in the possibilities of America, as embodied by the natural landscape. There's no irony and no lament here...only canvases awash in a rapturous encounter with the land."

— Boston Globe
"Viewers will no doubt find their own special OMG moment in the exhibition, as there are sunsets, vistas, details, herds of sheep and candle, landscapes and water views to delight just about any taste."

— Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School

September 21, 2012 - February 20, 2013

Please note the closing date has been changed from February 21
After a national tour, the forty-five iconic works, including Thomas Cole’s five-part series The Course of Empire and other masterworks by Cole, John F. Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper F. Cropsey, Asher B. Durand and others will once again be on display at the New-York Historical Society. This exhibition showcases the extraordinary depth and richness of the New-York Historical Society’s landscape collections, especially paintings by artists of the Hudson River School. Rising to eminence in New York during the mid-nineteenth century, this loosely knit group of artists, together with like-minded poets and writers, forged a self-consciously “American” landscape vision and literary voice. Both were grounded in the exploration of the natural world as a resource for spiritual renewal and as an expression of cultural and national identity.

Thomas Cole (1801–1848), Catskill Creek, NY, 1845. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, The Robert L. Stuart Collection, S-157

The Hudson River and the natural wonders along its banks had a long history of associations with earlier inhabitants, including Native Americans, the Dutch, and the British. Key battles of the American Revolution were fought along the river’s course. Such historical associations amid the evocative terrain of the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White Mountains enriched regional sites throughout the Hudson River Valley and New England, inspiring homegrown schools of painting and literature grounded in their scenery and history. After 1850 Hudson River School artists also sought inspiration further from home, enlisting their artistic vision the Arctic, and the Andes.

The paintings in the exhibition are organized around themes that illuminate the sites that drew both artists and travelers. Other themes investigate landscape imagery as a powerful narrative device that embodied ideas about nature and culture.