The Hudson River School
The Hudson Valley has long been the inspiration for artists, for obvious reasons. Between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River, and all the lush countryside in between, there is ample material to inspire many a painting. The most famous artistic movement to come out of this region, of course, was the Hudson River School. Not really a formal group of artists, but a loosely defined group the Hudson River School was composed of 19th Century painters who were generally influenced by the Romantic movement in literature, as well as the Transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson, whose writing shows a great reverence for the Nature in general and particularly the Northeastern American landscape. Thomas Cole is usually considered to be the "School's" founder. Though born in England, Cole came to love the mountains of the Catskills and they became his primary inspiration. Other renowned artists of the Hudson River School include Asher Durand, Frederic Church and John Frederick Kensett. Today, there are literally thousands of paintings that are labeled "Hudson River School" by auctioneers and gallery owners. Virtually any depiction of an American landscape, especially one that could conceivably be the Hudson River or Hudson Valley region is often given this label. For this reason, collectors of art have to be a bit cautious. If you love a painting you should, of course, buy it, but you should realize that not every mountain or river scene is a museum-worthy example of the Hudson River School movement. As with most labels and definitions, what really matters is how the artists and the art lover appreciates the beauty of the Hudson Valley (or other regions that served as inspiration for this movement, such as the Adirondacks or parts of New England). Whether a painting is a bona fide representative of the Hudson River School is ultimately an academic question.
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