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When he wasn’t painting, Hudson River School artist David Johnson loved to draw, with confident lines on big sheets. Every once in a while his pencil traced the figure of a woman. For example, in an 1886 drawing (above), a woman in full dress looks out over a pond in the Adirondacks. In lieu of a visible expression she appears self-possessed, as though lost in thought. In the forested background, meanwhile, is seen the shadowy and skulking figure of a man. The scene can be thought of as an unintentional metaphor: hidden in the trees of the Hudson River School artists lurked passion, ...

Centuries of trained artists have flocked to cities (or nearby art colonies) where they enjoy the camaraderie of fellow artists, social and professional organizations, exhibition venues, and access to patrons. The Hudson River School painters were no exception. Even so, there have always been those artists who prefer to work apart from the creative and commercial bustle. Sometimes it seems that the personal idiosyncrasies that pull them away from the crowd also help to nurture extraordinary art. Frank Anderson is a name that carries the weight of a passing shadow against the likes of ...

Which American painting might the Louvre be about to acquire? As ArtFixDaily and other news organizations have reported, the Musée du Louvre and three American institutions—the Terra Foundation for American Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art—have recently collaborated to bring the Hudson River School to the banks of the Seine. The modest exhibition is titled “New Frontier: Thomas Cole and the Birth of Landscape Painting in America” and includes four works by Thomas Cole and one by Asher Durand. Now on view at the Louvre, it travels to ...

When Hudson River School artist Jervis McEntee’s wife Gertrude died in October 1878 at the age of 44 of an unknown illness, it left a gaping hole in his life. They were married in 1854. Early on, they lived in an idyllic cottage on the McEntee family property overlooking the town of Rondout, New York (now Kingston). From their windows they could see the Catskill Mountains to the north and the Hudson River to the east. While Jervis worked on his art, Gertrude planted rose bushes around the cottage, played the piano, and sang: "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," "There you’ll ...

For the Hudson River School artists there was no more sacred place than Kaaterskill Clove, the rocky, forested nave into which Thomas Cole and successive aspirants trekked and clambered, paint box and umbrella in hand. The artists rarely came alone. Working in twos or threes outdoors in nature, they probably talked art, shared tips and encouragement, or sometimes just painted together in silence, listening to what William Cullen Bryant referred to as the "still voice" coming from "Earth and her waters, and the depths of air." Today that "still voice" speaks to a new generation of young ...

From one owner to another, from exhibition to auction, through years of adulation and years of neglect, a painting can endure a life of its own. Some lives are more exciting than others. Such is the case with Albert Bierstadt’s Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, a monumental work measuring over five feet by eight feet in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art. How it arrived at the Alabama museum is a story involving shady finances, public charity, and a historic escape from destruction. Bierstadt painted Looking Down Yosemite Valley in 1865 toward the end of the Civil War. ...

"My dear McEntee…"On August 28, 1863, Sanford Robinson Gifford wrote to Jervis McEntee from a book shop at Saratoga Spa in northern New York State (the original letter is digitized on the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website). Gifford had recently returned from his final tour of duty with the New York Seventh Regiment in the Civil War. He was attempting to gather his friends, including artists Richard William Hubbard and Worthington Whittredge, for a sketching tour of northern New York.  His letter is a revealing glimpse of the affection and humor that characterized the close ...

In the 1850s through 1860, John Frederick Kensett painted a series of at least five landscapes of the "Shrewsbury River" (now the Navesink River) along the New Jersey shore. The paintings are striking in their design and yet convey an atmosphere of translucent calm, for which they are justifiably renowned.A splendid example is included in "Painting the American Vision," an exhibition of Hudson River School landscapes from the New York Historical Society, on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts starting July 30. The exhibition travels to the Columbia Museum of Art in ...

Sometimes a small painting can tell a big story. Such is the case with a six-by-nine-inch landscape by John S. Jameson. The painting is on display at the Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, New York, in the new exhibition, "Rally 'Round the Flag: Frederic Edwin Church and the Civil War.”Born in 1842 in Hartford, John S. Jameson was a rising young star among the New York painters at the time of the Civil War. The patriotic tug of duty, however, changed his course.A prodigy in both art and music, Jameson attracted attention in the 1850s while just barely a teenager. His father was the ...

Everyone knows that art world players throw big bucks at Picasso, Warhol, and Monet. Yet within the past couple of months, the typically serene and dignified field of Hudson River School art has been ruffled by the secretive sale of at least two monumental paintings, along with several lesser, but still important works.Upwards of $100 million may have changed hands, most of it for one painting by Asher Durand and one by Thomas Cole, in what may be the highest prices ever paid for nineteenth century American art.The Hudson River School paintings were part of the Westervelt corporate ...