Hudson River School Paintings
America's first school of landscape painting: Thomas Cole's Catskills, Frederic Church's Andes and Niagara, Bierstadt's Rockies, and the quiet, light-filled coasts of Kensett, Heade and Fitz Henry Lane.
39 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
The school and its painters
Thomas Cole, born in England, painted the Catskills from 1825 and made landscape a serious subject for American painters. Frederic Church, his pupil, travelled to South America and to the icebergs off Labrador and painted them on a vast scale; Albert Bierstadt did the same for the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Asher Durand painted the forest close up. Kensett, Heade and Fitz Henry Lane, grouped later under the name Luminism, painted still water and long, even light.
The works in this collection
Cole's The Oxbow, the five canvases of The Course of Empire and the four of The Voyage of Life; Church's Heart of the Andes and Niagara; Durand's The Beeches; Bierstadt's Western views; Kensett's coasts, Heade's marshes and flowers, and Lane's harbours. Each is reproduced whole from a museum scan.
Hanging them
These are wide pictures with a horizon, so they suit a long wall: above a sofa, a sideboard or a bed, at 36 by 24 inches where the scan allows. Cole's series hang well as a row of four or five at the same size. Dark wood frames suit the warm skies.