Luminism (American art style)

Artists who were most central to the development of the luminist style include Fitz Henry Lane, Martin Johnson Heade, Sanford Gifford, and John F.

[1] Painters with a less clear affiliation include Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt, Worthington Whittredge, Raymond Dabb Yelland, Alfred Thompson Bricher, James Augustus Suydam, and David Johnson.

[4] The term luminism was introduced by mid-20th-century art historians to describe a 19th-century American style of painting that developed as an offshoot of the Hudson River School.

[5] The National Gallery of Art's landmark 1980 exhibition American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1825-1875 included many artists now primarily associated with the Hudson River School, such as Frederic Edwin Church.

According to Earl E. Powell, this is particularly visible in paintings by John Frederick Kensett, who shifted the visual concern for landscape to an interest in quietism, making pictures of mood that depict a poetic experience of nature.

while rarified veils of light, color, and atmosphere reflected in water offer an experience of silence", a description akin to the sublime.

[11] The artists who painted in this style did not refer to their own work as "luminism", nor did they articulate any common aesthetic philosophy beyond the principles of the Hudson River School.