Hudson River School

<p>The Hudson River School formed in the 1820s around a group of American landscape painters who found their first subjects in the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains before pushing further west. Working in the wake of Romanticism, they treated the American wilderness as something close to sacred, worth painting on a grand scale as proof of the young country's natural grandeur.</p> <p><a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/thomas-cole"><strong>Thomas Cole</strong></a> founded the movement, painting allegorical cycles like <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/the-voyage-of-life-old-age"><strong>The Voyage of Life: Old Age</strong></a> alongside straightforward wilderness views. <a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/frederic-edwin-church"><strong>Frederic Edwin Church</strong></a>, his most successful student, traveled to South America and painted <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/heart-of-andes"><strong>Heart of the Andes</strong></a> on a canvas so large that viewers paid admission to see it displayed alone in a darkened room. Church's <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/niagara-church"><strong>Niagara</strong></a> made him internationally famous for its scale and detail.</p> <p><a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/albert-bierstadt"><strong>Albert Bierstadt</strong></a> carried the same theatrical grandeur west to the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite, as seen in <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/among-sierra-nevada-bierstadt"><strong>Among the Sierra Nevada, California</strong></a>, while <a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/george-caleb-bingham"><strong>George Caleb Bingham</strong></a> focused on frontier life along the Missouri River in works like <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/fur-traders-missouri"><strong>Fur Traders Descending the Missouri</strong></a>. <a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/john-frederick-kensett"><strong>John Frederick Kensett</strong></a> painted quieter coastal scenes that helped bridge the movement into the related style of Luminism. The Hudson River School's paintings helped build public support for landscape preservation, including the eventual creation of national parks.</p>