Talking Art – Hudson River School – October

The next meeting of the Talking Art group this term will be on 27th of October at the Javea Players’ Studio Theatre. This will be a second attempt at the session originally planned for 22nd September.

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement which flourished between 1825 and 1870 and typically depicted the Hudson River Valley. It is associated with a group of painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism and the traditions of European landscape painters such as Claud Lorraine and J.M.W. Turner. Hudson River School paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century: discovery, exploration, and settlement. They also depict the American landscape as a pastoral setting, where human beings and nature coexist peacefully. Hudson River School landscapes are characterized by their realistic, detailed, and sometimes idealized portrayal of nature, Thomas Cole (1801–1848) is regarded as the founder, followed by Frederic Church (1826–1900), John Kensett (1816-1872) and others.

Although flourishing and popular at the time, with the advent of Modernism it was for a long period regarded as outmoded and conservative. However, it has now enjoyed a resurgence with critical and popular acclaim.