Hudson River School

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism.

Early on, the paintings typically depicted the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and White Mountains.

Works by second-generation artists expanded to include other locales in New England, the Maritimes, the American West, and South America.

[1] The term Hudson River School is thought to have been coined by the New York Tribune art critic Clarence Cook or by landscape painter Homer Dodge Martin.

[2] The name appeared in print in 1879, it was initially used during the 1870s disparagingly, as the style had gone out of favor after the plein-air Barbizon School had come into vogue among American patrons and collectors.

[1] Hudson River School paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century: discovery, exploration, and settlement.

[4] In general, Hudson River School artists believed that nature in the form of the American landscape was a reflection of God,[5] though they varied in the depth of their religious conviction.

Julie Hart Beers led sketching expeditions in the Hudson Valley region before moving to a New York City art studio with her daughters.

Some of the most notable works in the Atheneum's collection are 13 landscapes by Thomas Cole and 11 by Hartford native Frederic Edwin Church.