Hudson River School Painters: Biographies of the Seven Honored in Sculpture
Placed in the Long Garden in 2025, these seven large bronze busts of Hudson River School painters by the noted sculptor Greg Wyatt were a most generous gift of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. On the reverse of each bust is the biography of the artist depicted. The artists' biographies are also listed here in the order that the sculptures are placed, from south (near the Vista) to north (near the steps to the Rhododendron Walk).
Thomas Cole, American, 1801 - 1848
Thomas Cole, America's leading landscape painter during the first half of the nineteenth century, was born on February 1, 1801 in Bolton-le-Moor, England. Before emigrating with his family to the United States in 1818, he served as an engraver's assistant and as an apprentice to a designer of calico prints. Cole worked briefly as an engraver in Philadelphia before joining his family in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1819. While in Ohio he apparently learned the rudiments of oil painting from an itinerant portrait painter named Stein. In 1823, during a stay in Pittsburgh, Cole began drawing from nature, creating closely observed and intensely expressive images of trees and branches. Later that year he returned to Philadelphia, where he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and worked in a variety of art-related jobs.
In April 1825 Cole moved to New York, where his family had also relocated. That summer he made an extensive sketching tour up the Hudson River and into the Catskill Mountains. In late October 1825 three of his landscapes were sold to three prominent figures in the young nation's art community, John Trumbull (1756-1843), William Dunlap (1766-1839), and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886). In January 1826 Cole was elected a founding member of the National Academy of Design, and his works were increasingly in demand with leading patrons such as Daniel Wadsworth (1771-1848) of Hartford and Robert Gilmor, Jr. (1774-1848) of Baltimore.
Although Cole had ample commissions in the late 1820s to paint pictures of American scenery, his ambition was to create a "higher style of landscape" that could express moral or religious meanings. His first major efforts in this vein met with mixed reviews, and he decided study and travel in Europe were necessary. In June 1829 Cole sailed for England, where he studied the works of Old Masters and also met Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837). He subsequently traveled in France and in Italy, with lengthy stays in Rome and Florence. While in Italy he conceived of a multi-part landscape series tracing the rise and fall of an archetypal civilization. Although he failed to interest Gilmor in commissioning the series, upon his return to America in 1832 Cole did manage to convince the retired New York merchant Luman Reed (1785-1836) to support his grand project. The result, the five canvas Course of Empire (New-York Historical Society), was completed in 1836 and received considerable popular attention and generally favorable reviews.
Cole continued to paint American landscapes in the 1830s and early 1840s, but much of his energy in these years went into the creation of complex imaginary works such as Departure and Return (1837, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and the two versions of The Voyage of Life (1839-1840, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, and 1842, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). In 1836 he married Maria Barstow and settled in Catskill, New York, a small village on the west side of the Hudson and close to the Catskill Mountains. That same year Cole, who was throughout his career a prolific writer of prose and poetry, published his "Essay on American Scenery" in the American Monthly Magazine, in which he expressed many of his most deeply felt convictions about landscape painting.
In 1841 Cole make a second trip abroad, with extensive travel in Italy, including a memorable visit to Sicily that resulted in several views of Mt. Etna. He returned to Catskill in 1842; in 1844 he accepted the young Frederic Edwin Church as a pupil on Daniel Wadsworth's recommendation. In the mid and late 1840s Cole painted many impressive American landscapes, which are notable for an increased accuracy in the depiction of atmosphere and light. At the same time he labored, ultimately without success, to complete a five-part series called The Cross and the World, in which he endeavored to portray the individual's quest for spiritual knowledge and salvation.
Cole's premature death in Catskill on February 11, 1848, was universally mourned and a comprehensive memorial exhibition of his works was quickly organized in New York. His influence on the course of American landscape painting was profound and his works influenced numerous younger painters who matured in the late 1840s and early 1850s, most notably Jasper F. Cropsey and Church.
Thomas Cole, America's leading landscape painter during the first half of the nineteenth century, was born on February 1, 1801 in Bolton-le-Moor, England. Before emigrating with his family to the United States in 1818, he served as an engraver's assistant and as an apprentice to a designer of calico prints. Cole worked briefly as an engraver in Philadelphia before joining his family in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1819. While in Ohio he apparently learned the rudiments of oil painting from an itinerant portrait painter named Stein. In 1823, during a stay in Pittsburgh, Cole began drawing from nature, creating closely observed and intensely expressive images of trees and branches. Later that year he returned to Philadelphia, where he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and worked in a variety of art-related jobs.
In April 1825 Cole moved to New York, where his family had also relocated. That summer he made an extensive sketching tour up the Hudson River and into the Catskill Mountains. In late October 1825 three of his landscapes were sold to three prominent figures in the young nation's art community, John Trumbull (1756-1843), William Dunlap (1766-1839), and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886). In January 1826 Cole was elected a founding member of the National Academy of Design, and his works were increasingly in demand with leading patrons such as Daniel Wadsworth (1771-1848) of Hartford and Robert Gilmor, Jr. (1774-1848) of Baltimore.
Although Cole had ample commissions in the late 1820s to paint pictures of American scenery, his ambition was to create a "higher style of landscape" that could express moral or religious meanings. His first major efforts in this vein met with mixed reviews, and he decided study and travel in Europe were necessary. In June 1829 Cole sailed for England, where he studied the works of Old Masters and also met Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837). He subsequently traveled in France and in Italy, with lengthy stays in Rome and Florence. While in Italy he conceived of a multi-part landscape series tracing the rise and fall of an archetypal civilization. Although he failed to interest Gilmor in commissioning the series, upon his return to America in 1832 Cole did manage to convince the retired New York merchant Luman Reed (1785-1836) to support his grand project. The result, the five canvas Course of Empire (New-York Historical Society), was completed in 1836 and received considerable popular attention and generally favorable reviews.
Cole continued to paint American landscapes in the 1830s and early 1840s, but much of his energy in these years went into the creation of complex imaginary works such as Departure and Return (1837, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and the two versions of The Voyage of Life (1839-1840, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, and 1842, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). In 1836 he married Maria Barstow and settled in Catskill, New York, a small village on the west side of the Hudson and close to the Catskill Mountains. That same year Cole, who was throughout his career a prolific writer of prose and poetry, published his "Essay on American Scenery" in the American Monthly Magazine, in which he expressed many of his most deeply felt convictions about landscape painting.
In 1841 Cole make a second trip abroad, with extensive travel in Italy, including a memorable visit to Sicily that resulted in several views of Mt. Etna. He returned to Catskill in 1842; in 1844 he accepted the young Frederic Edwin Church as a pupil on Daniel Wadsworth's recommendation. In the mid and late 1840s Cole painted many impressive American landscapes, which are notable for an increased accuracy in the depiction of atmosphere and light. At the same time he labored, ultimately without success, to complete a five-part series called The Cross and the World, in which he endeavored to portray the individual's quest for spiritual knowledge and salvation.
Cole's premature death in Catskill on February 11, 1848, was universally mourned and a comprehensive memorial exhibition of his works was quickly organized in New York. His influence on the course of American landscape painting was profound and his works influenced numerous younger painters who matured in the late 1840s and early 1850s, most notably Jasper F. Cropsey and Church.
Jasper Francis Cropsey, American, 1823 - 1900
Jasper Francis Cropsey was born February 18, 1823, on his father's farm in Rossville, Staten Island, New York. He was the eldest of eight children in a family descended from Dutch and French Huguenot immigrants.
In 1837, at the age of fourteen, Cropsey won a diploma at the Mechanics Institute Fair of the City of New York for a model house that he built. That same year he was apprenticed to the architect Joseph Trench for a five year period. After eighteen months, Cropsey, who had shown an early proficiency in drawing, found himself responsible for nearly all of the office's finished renderings. Impressed with his talents, his employer provided him with paints, canvas, and a space in which to study and perfect his artistic skills. During this period Cropsey took lessons in watercolor from an Englishman, Edward Maury, and was encouraged and advised by American genre painters William T. Ranney (1813-1857) and William Sidney Mount (1807-1868). It was in 1843 that Cropsey first exhibited a painting at the National Academy of Design, a landscape titled Italian Composition, probably based on a print, which was quite well received. He was elected an associate member of that institution the following year and a full member in 1851.
After leaving Trench's office in 1842 and while supporting himself by taking commissions for architectural designs, Cropsey had begun to make landscape studies from nature. A two-week sketching trip to New Jersey resulted in two paintings of Greenwood Lake that were shown at the American Art Union in 1843. It was during one of his several subsequent trips to Greenwood Lake that the artist met Maria Cooley, to whom he was married in May 1847. The couple left for an extensive European tour immediately thereafter. After traveling in Britain for the summer, the Cropseys spent the next year among the colony of American artists settled in Rome.
Upon his return to the United States in 1849, Cropsey first visited the White Mountains and later took a studio in New York City from which he traveled in the summers through New York State, Vermont, and New Hampshire. When sales of his works were low, as they sometimes were in these early days, he would teach to supplement his income. The only one of his pupils to gain substantial recognition, however, was the landscape painter David Johnson (1827-1908).
In June 1856 Cropsey and his wife sailed for England for the second time and soon thereafter settled into a studio at Kensington Gate in London. There the couple established an active social life, counting among their friends John Ruskin, Lord Lyndhurst, and Sir Charles Eastlake. Cropsey executed commissions for pictures of English landmarks for patrons in the United States, and painted scenes of America for a British audience. In museums and galleries he was exposed to the naturalistic landscapes of John Constable and the Romantic paintings of J.M.W. Turner. At this time he also explored and recorded the Dorset Coast and the Isle of Wight.
Cropsey returned to America in 1863 and shortly thereafter visited Gettysburg to record the battlefield's topography in a painting. He began to accept architectural commissions once again and produced his best known design, the ornate cast and wrought iron "Queen Anne" style passenger stations (begun 1876) of the Gilbert Elevated Railway along New York's Sixth Avenue. For himself, beginning in 1866, Cropsey built a twenty-nine room mansion in Warwick, New York. He was forced to sell this home in 1884 but was able to purchase a house at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, to which he added a handsome
studio. Today the site, called Ever Rest, is maintained as a museum by the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. For fifteen years Cropsey continued to paint in his home on the Hudson. Although he exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design, his realistic, meticulously detailed, and dramatically composed scenes were eclipsed in popularity by the smaller-scale, softer, mood-evoking landscapes of Barbizon inspired painters such as George Inness (1825-1894). After suffering a stroke in 1893 Cropsey, a founder of the American Society of Painters in Watercolor (later the American Watercolor Society), turned increasingly to this medium, painting both in watercolor and oil until his death in Hastings-on-Hudson on June 22, 1900.
Jasper Francis Cropsey was born February 18, 1823, on his father's farm in Rossville, Staten Island, New York. He was the eldest of eight children in a family descended from Dutch and French Huguenot immigrants.
In 1837, at the age of fourteen, Cropsey won a diploma at the Mechanics Institute Fair of the City of New York for a model house that he built. That same year he was apprenticed to the architect Joseph Trench for a five year period. After eighteen months, Cropsey, who had shown an early proficiency in drawing, found himself responsible for nearly all of the office's finished renderings. Impressed with his talents, his employer provided him with paints, canvas, and a space in which to study and perfect his artistic skills. During this period Cropsey took lessons in watercolor from an Englishman, Edward Maury, and was encouraged and advised by American genre painters William T. Ranney (1813-1857) and William Sidney Mount (1807-1868). It was in 1843 that Cropsey first exhibited a painting at the National Academy of Design, a landscape titled Italian Composition, probably based on a print, which was quite well received. He was elected an associate member of that institution the following year and a full member in 1851.
After leaving Trench's office in 1842 and while supporting himself by taking commissions for architectural designs, Cropsey had begun to make landscape studies from nature. A two-week sketching trip to New Jersey resulted in two paintings of Greenwood Lake that were shown at the American Art Union in 1843. It was during one of his several subsequent trips to Greenwood Lake that the artist met Maria Cooley, to whom he was married in May 1847. The couple left for an extensive European tour immediately thereafter. After traveling in Britain for the summer, the Cropseys spent the next year among the colony of American artists settled in Rome.
Upon his return to the United States in 1849, Cropsey first visited the White Mountains and later took a studio in New York City from which he traveled in the summers through New York State, Vermont, and New Hampshire. When sales of his works were low, as they sometimes were in these early days, he would teach to supplement his income. The only one of his pupils to gain substantial recognition, however, was the landscape painter David Johnson (1827-1908).
In June 1856 Cropsey and his wife sailed for England for the second time and soon thereafter settled into a studio at Kensington Gate in London. There the couple established an active social life, counting among their friends John Ruskin, Lord Lyndhurst, and Sir Charles Eastlake. Cropsey executed commissions for pictures of English landmarks for patrons in the United States, and painted scenes of America for a British audience. In museums and galleries he was exposed to the naturalistic landscapes of John Constable and the Romantic paintings of J.M.W. Turner. At this time he also explored and recorded the Dorset Coast and the Isle of Wight.
Cropsey returned to America in 1863 and shortly thereafter visited Gettysburg to record the battlefield's topography in a painting. He began to accept architectural commissions once again and produced his best known design, the ornate cast and wrought iron "Queen Anne" style passenger stations (begun 1876) of the Gilbert Elevated Railway along New York's Sixth Avenue. For himself, beginning in 1866, Cropsey built a twenty-nine room mansion in Warwick, New York. He was forced to sell this home in 1884 but was able to purchase a house at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, to which he added a handsome
studio. Today the site, called Ever Rest, is maintained as a museum by the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. For fifteen years Cropsey continued to paint in his home on the Hudson. Although he exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design, his realistic, meticulously detailed, and dramatically composed scenes were eclipsed in popularity by the smaller-scale, softer, mood-evoking landscapes of Barbizon inspired painters such as George Inness (1825-1894). After suffering a stroke in 1893 Cropsey, a founder of the American Society of Painters in Watercolor (later the American Watercolor Society), turned increasingly to this medium, painting both in watercolor and oil until his death in Hastings-on-Hudson on June 22, 1900.
Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826 - 1900
Frederic Edwin Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 4, 1826, the only son of a wealthy
businessman. Although his father hoped he would become a physician or enter the world of business, Church
persisted in his early desire to be a painter. In 1842-1843 he studied in Hartford with Alexander H. Emmons
(1816-1879), a local landscape and portrait painter, and Benjamin H. Coe (1799-after 1883), a well-known
drawing instructor. In 1844 Church's father, at last resigned to his son's choice of a career, arranged through his
friend, the art patron Daniel Wadsworth, two years of study with Thomas Cole. Church was thus the first pupil
accepted by America's leading landscape painter, a distinction that immediately gave him an advantage over other
aspiring painters of his generation. From the first, Church showed a remarkable talent for drawing and a strong
inclination to paint in a crisp, tightly focused style. In 1845 he made his debut at the annual exhibition of the
National Academy of Design in New York, where he would continue to show throughout his career. Two years
later four of his paintings were shown at the American Art-Union, and by that point he was established in New
York as one of the most promising younger painters. In 1849, at the age of twenty-three, he was elected to full
membership in the National Academy, the youngest person ever so honored.
During the late 1840s and early 1850s Church experimented with a variety of subjects, ranging from recognizable views of American scenery, to highly charged scenes of natural drama, to imaginary creations based on biblical and literary sources and much indebted to Cole. Gradually, however, he began to specialize in ambitious works that combined carefully studied details from nature in idealized compositions that had a grandeur and seriousness beyond the usual efforts of his contemporaries. Church traveled widely in search of subjects, first throughout the northern United States and then, in 1853, to South America. Inspired by the writings of the great German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, he spent five months in Colombia and Ecuador. His first full-scale masterpiece, The Andes of Ecuador (1855; Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem), was a four-by-six-foot canvas depicting a vast tropical mountain panorama that astounded viewers with its combination of precise foreground detail and sweeping space. Two years later Church's reputation as America's most prominent landscape painter was secured with the exhibition in New York, London and other cities of Niagara (1857; Corcoran Gallery
of Art, Washington) in New York. A second trip to South America took place that same year and resulted two years later in his most famous painting of the tropics, Heart of the Andes (1859; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Frederic Edwin Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 4, 1826, the only son of a wealthy
businessman. Although his father hoped he would become a physician or enter the world of business, Church
persisted in his early desire to be a painter. In 1842-1843 he studied in Hartford with Alexander H. Emmons
(1816-1879), a local landscape and portrait painter, and Benjamin H. Coe (1799-after 1883), a well-known
drawing instructor. In 1844 Church's father, at last resigned to his son's choice of a career, arranged through his
friend, the art patron Daniel Wadsworth, two years of study with Thomas Cole. Church was thus the first pupil
accepted by America's leading landscape painter, a distinction that immediately gave him an advantage over other
aspiring painters of his generation. From the first, Church showed a remarkable talent for drawing and a strong
inclination to paint in a crisp, tightly focused style. In 1845 he made his debut at the annual exhibition of the
National Academy of Design in New York, where he would continue to show throughout his career. Two years
later four of his paintings were shown at the American Art-Union, and by that point he was established in New
York as one of the most promising younger painters. In 1849, at the age of twenty-three, he was elected to full
membership in the National Academy, the youngest person ever so honored.
During the late 1840s and early 1850s Church experimented with a variety of subjects, ranging from recognizable views of American scenery, to highly charged scenes of natural drama, to imaginary creations based on biblical and literary sources and much indebted to Cole. Gradually, however, he began to specialize in ambitious works that combined carefully studied details from nature in idealized compositions that had a grandeur and seriousness beyond the usual efforts of his contemporaries. Church traveled widely in search of subjects, first throughout the northern United States and then, in 1853, to South America. Inspired by the writings of the great German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, he spent five months in Colombia and Ecuador. His first full-scale masterpiece, The Andes of Ecuador (1855; Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem), was a four-by-six-foot canvas depicting a vast tropical mountain panorama that astounded viewers with its combination of precise foreground detail and sweeping space. Two years later Church's reputation as America's most prominent landscape painter was secured with the exhibition in New York, London and other cities of Niagara (1857; Corcoran Gallery
of Art, Washington) in New York. A second trip to South America took place that same year and resulted two years later in his most famous painting of the tropics, Heart of the Andes (1859; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Asher Brown Durand, American, 1796 - 1886
Asher B. Durand was born on August 21, 1796, in Jefferson Village (now Maplewood), New Jersey, and studied
engraving with his father, a watchmaker and silversmith. From 1812 to 1817 he was apprenticed to the New Jersey
engraver Peter Maverick. In 1817 he formed a partnership with Maverick and opened a branch of the firm in New
York. Around 1818 Durand began informal study and drawing from plaster casts at the American Academy of
Fine Arts, where his work came to the attention of the Academy's president, John Trumbull (1756-1843). In 1820
Trumbull commissioned Durand to engrave his painting The Declaration of Independence (1787-1820, Yale
University Art Gallery). Durand became a leading engraver, and enjoyed considerable success producing bank
notes, book illustrations, portraits, and copies after other artists' works.
In the 1820s and 1830s Durand owned a series of printmaking firms and was active in New York cultural circles.
In 1825 he helped organize the New York Drawing Association, which in 1826 became the National Academy of
Design, with Durand as one of the fifteen founding members. In these same years he was also involved with
several other arts groups, including James Fenimore Cooper's Bread and Cheese Club and the Sketch Club.
In the early 1830s Durand worked less frequently as an engraver and began painting portraits. Around 1835, inspired by Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and encouraged by the prominent New York merchant and art patron Luman Reed (1785-1836), Durand ended his career as an engraver in favor of painting. Continuing to produce portraits, he also created in the mid-1830s a number of paintings based on historical subjects and genre themes. In 1837, he accompanied Cole on a sketching trip to the Schroon Lake region in the Adirondacks and the following year he contributed nine landscapes to the annual National Academy of Design exhibition. In 1838 and 1839 he again made summer sketching trips and contributed landscapes to the Academy exhibitions. In 1840 he exhibited Landscape, Composition, Morning and Landscape, Composition, Evening (both National Academy of Design), an
allegorical pair inspired by Cole.
In the summer of 1840 Durand went with fellow artists John F. Kensett (1816-1872), John Casilear (1811-1893), and Thomas P. Rossiter (1818-1871) to Europe, where he studied the works of Old Masters, especially Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). After his return to New York in July 1841 he exhibited paintings of European scenery, but he soon resumed summer sketching tours in the Catskills and the Hudson River Valley. In 1845 Durand was named president of the National Academy, a position he would hold until 1861. He increasingly believed that direct study of nature should be the primary inspiration for American artists and began producing meticulously painted works that were much admired for their faithful depictions of natural forms and light and atmosphere. Such works also
expressed sentiments similar to those in the poetry of his friend William Cullen Bryant, and several of his paintings of the 1850s were directly inspired by Bryant poems.
Following Cole's death in 1848 Durand assumed a leading role in the American landscape school and exerted considerable influence on many younger painters. His Kindred Spirits of 1849 (New York Public Library), painted in memory of Cole, almost immediately became one of the best-known paintings in the country. By the 1850s Durand had perfected the two compositional types that became basic to Hudson River School painting, the vertical
forest interior and the landscape panorama. With the publication of nine "Letters on Landscape Painting" in the New York art journal The Crayon in 1855, Durand codified the tenets and practices of Hudson River School as instructions addressed to an imaginary student. Espousing theories similar to those of the influential British critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), he advised American painters to work directly from nature and to give precedence to
New World subjects over European ones.
During the 1860s Durand followed his established routine of sketching in the summers and painting in New York during the winters. In April 1869 he moved back to New Jersey from New York to a new house and studio built on family property in Maplewood, where he remained for the rest of his life. He continued to paint, with most of his works of the 1870s (his last picture was completed in 1878) repeating compositions from earlier decades, although often with a more atmospheric and tonal handling of light. He died on September 17, 1886.
Asher B. Durand was born on August 21, 1796, in Jefferson Village (now Maplewood), New Jersey, and studied
engraving with his father, a watchmaker and silversmith. From 1812 to 1817 he was apprenticed to the New Jersey
engraver Peter Maverick. In 1817 he formed a partnership with Maverick and opened a branch of the firm in New
York. Around 1818 Durand began informal study and drawing from plaster casts at the American Academy of
Fine Arts, where his work came to the attention of the Academy's president, John Trumbull (1756-1843). In 1820
Trumbull commissioned Durand to engrave his painting The Declaration of Independence (1787-1820, Yale
University Art Gallery). Durand became a leading engraver, and enjoyed considerable success producing bank
notes, book illustrations, portraits, and copies after other artists' works.
In the 1820s and 1830s Durand owned a series of printmaking firms and was active in New York cultural circles.
In 1825 he helped organize the New York Drawing Association, which in 1826 became the National Academy of
Design, with Durand as one of the fifteen founding members. In these same years he was also involved with
several other arts groups, including James Fenimore Cooper's Bread and Cheese Club and the Sketch Club.
In the early 1830s Durand worked less frequently as an engraver and began painting portraits. Around 1835, inspired by Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and encouraged by the prominent New York merchant and art patron Luman Reed (1785-1836), Durand ended his career as an engraver in favor of painting. Continuing to produce portraits, he also created in the mid-1830s a number of paintings based on historical subjects and genre themes. In 1837, he accompanied Cole on a sketching trip to the Schroon Lake region in the Adirondacks and the following year he contributed nine landscapes to the annual National Academy of Design exhibition. In 1838 and 1839 he again made summer sketching trips and contributed landscapes to the Academy exhibitions. In 1840 he exhibited Landscape, Composition, Morning and Landscape, Composition, Evening (both National Academy of Design), an
allegorical pair inspired by Cole.
In the summer of 1840 Durand went with fellow artists John F. Kensett (1816-1872), John Casilear (1811-1893), and Thomas P. Rossiter (1818-1871) to Europe, where he studied the works of Old Masters, especially Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). After his return to New York in July 1841 he exhibited paintings of European scenery, but he soon resumed summer sketching tours in the Catskills and the Hudson River Valley. In 1845 Durand was named president of the National Academy, a position he would hold until 1861. He increasingly believed that direct study of nature should be the primary inspiration for American artists and began producing meticulously painted works that were much admired for their faithful depictions of natural forms and light and atmosphere. Such works also
expressed sentiments similar to those in the poetry of his friend William Cullen Bryant, and several of his paintings of the 1850s were directly inspired by Bryant poems.
Following Cole's death in 1848 Durand assumed a leading role in the American landscape school and exerted considerable influence on many younger painters. His Kindred Spirits of 1849 (New York Public Library), painted in memory of Cole, almost immediately became one of the best-known paintings in the country. By the 1850s Durand had perfected the two compositional types that became basic to Hudson River School painting, the vertical
forest interior and the landscape panorama. With the publication of nine "Letters on Landscape Painting" in the New York art journal The Crayon in 1855, Durand codified the tenets and practices of Hudson River School as instructions addressed to an imaginary student. Espousing theories similar to those of the influential British critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), he advised American painters to work directly from nature and to give precedence to
New World subjects over European ones.
During the 1860s Durand followed his established routine of sketching in the summers and painting in New York during the winters. In April 1869 he moved back to New Jersey from New York to a new house and studio built on family property in Maplewood, where he remained for the rest of his life. He continued to paint, with most of his works of the 1870s (his last picture was completed in 1878) repeating compositions from earlier decades, although often with a more atmospheric and tonal handling of light. He died on September 17, 1886.
Thomas Moran, American, 1837 - 1926
Thomas Moran was born 12 February 1837 in Bolton, England, not far from Manchester, the birthplace of the
Industrial Revolution. Several generations of the Moran family had worked as handloom weavers in Bolton until the
introduction of power looms radically changed the industry. In 1842/1843, seeking public education for his children
and economic opportunity in a new land, Thomas Moran, Sr., journeyed to America. The following year his wife
and children joined him and the reunited family settled in Kensington, a suburb of Philadelphia, where they became
part of a well-established community of immigrant textile workers.
While still a teenager Thomas became an apprentice at the Philadelphia engraving firm of Scattergood and Telfer.
After three years he withdrew from his apprenticeship and began working in the studio of his older brother, Edward,
who had begun to establish himself as a marine painter. Serving, in effect, a second apprenticeship, Moran benefitted
not only from the advice of his brother but also from that of James Hamilton (1819-1878), a well-known
Philadelphia painter who had befriended Edward. Described by contemporaries as the "American Turner," Hamilton
may have sparked Thomas Moran's life-long interest in the work of English artist J.M.W. Turner.
In 1861, after several years of studying Turner's work in reproduction, Thomas and Edward journeyed to London where they spent several months studying and copying Turner's work at the National Gallery. A decade later, when Thomas journeyed west to join Ferdinand Vandiver Hayden's expedition to Yellowstone, the watercolors he produced on site bore clear evidence of his debt to Turner. Moran's trip to Yellowstone in 1871 marked the turning point of his career. The previous year he had been asked by Scribner's Magazine to rework sketches made in Yellowstone by a member of an earlier expedition party. Intrigued by the geysers and mudpots of Yellowstone, he borrowed money to make the trip himself. Numerous paintings and commissions resulted from this journey, but the sale of his enormous (7 by 12 feet) Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872, National Museum of American Art) to Congress shortly after passage of the bill that set Yellowstone aside as the first National Park, brought Moran considerable attention.
In 1873, following up on his earlier success, Moran joined John Wesley Powell's expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Shortly after his return he set to work on a second canvas equal in size to his earlier Yellowstone painting. In 1874 Congress purchased Chasm of the Colorado (1873-1874, National Museum of American Art), which became the second of Moran's western landscapes to hang in the Capitol. That same year Moran traveled to Denver and then north to see the Mountain of the Holy Cross--a massive mountain with a cross of snow on its side. The resulting painting became Moran's chief contribution to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. Iconic in its union of wilderness and religion, the Mountain of the Holy Cross
became one of Moran's best known works.
His reputation established, Moran continued to travel widely during the following decades. He returned to Europe several times again following trails blazed by Turner. In 1883 he journeyed to Mexico. In later years he returned to the Grand Canyon and traveled more extensively in Arizona and New Mexico, producing a number of striking works of the pueblos at Acoma and Laguna. Extraordinarily productive, both as a painter and an etcher, Moran continued to work well into his eighth decade. At his death in Santa Barbara, California, in August 1926, he was memorialized as the "Dean of American Landscape Painters."
Thomas Moran was born 12 February 1837 in Bolton, England, not far from Manchester, the birthplace of the
Industrial Revolution. Several generations of the Moran family had worked as handloom weavers in Bolton until the
introduction of power looms radically changed the industry. In 1842/1843, seeking public education for his children
and economic opportunity in a new land, Thomas Moran, Sr., journeyed to America. The following year his wife
and children joined him and the reunited family settled in Kensington, a suburb of Philadelphia, where they became
part of a well-established community of immigrant textile workers.
While still a teenager Thomas became an apprentice at the Philadelphia engraving firm of Scattergood and Telfer.
After three years he withdrew from his apprenticeship and began working in the studio of his older brother, Edward,
who had begun to establish himself as a marine painter. Serving, in effect, a second apprenticeship, Moran benefitted
not only from the advice of his brother but also from that of James Hamilton (1819-1878), a well-known
Philadelphia painter who had befriended Edward. Described by contemporaries as the "American Turner," Hamilton
may have sparked Thomas Moran's life-long interest in the work of English artist J.M.W. Turner.
In 1861, after several years of studying Turner's work in reproduction, Thomas and Edward journeyed to London where they spent several months studying and copying Turner's work at the National Gallery. A decade later, when Thomas journeyed west to join Ferdinand Vandiver Hayden's expedition to Yellowstone, the watercolors he produced on site bore clear evidence of his debt to Turner. Moran's trip to Yellowstone in 1871 marked the turning point of his career. The previous year he had been asked by Scribner's Magazine to rework sketches made in Yellowstone by a member of an earlier expedition party. Intrigued by the geysers and mudpots of Yellowstone, he borrowed money to make the trip himself. Numerous paintings and commissions resulted from this journey, but the sale of his enormous (7 by 12 feet) Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872, National Museum of American Art) to Congress shortly after passage of the bill that set Yellowstone aside as the first National Park, brought Moran considerable attention.
In 1873, following up on his earlier success, Moran joined John Wesley Powell's expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Shortly after his return he set to work on a second canvas equal in size to his earlier Yellowstone painting. In 1874 Congress purchased Chasm of the Colorado (1873-1874, National Museum of American Art), which became the second of Moran's western landscapes to hang in the Capitol. That same year Moran traveled to Denver and then north to see the Mountain of the Holy Cross--a massive mountain with a cross of snow on its side. The resulting painting became Moran's chief contribution to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. Iconic in its union of wilderness and religion, the Mountain of the Holy Cross
became one of Moran's best known works.
His reputation established, Moran continued to travel widely during the following decades. He returned to Europe several times again following trails blazed by Turner. In 1883 he journeyed to Mexico. In later years he returned to the Grand Canyon and traveled more extensively in Arizona and New Mexico, producing a number of striking works of the pueblos at Acoma and Laguna. Extraordinarily productive, both as a painter and an etcher, Moran continued to work well into his eighth decade. At his death in Santa Barbara, California, in August 1926, he was memorialized as the "Dean of American Landscape Painters."
Albert Bierstadt, American, 1830 - 1902
Albert Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Prussia, on January 7, 1830, but he spent his early years in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, where his parents settled two years after his birth. Henry Bierstadt, the artist's father, found work as a
cooper in the capital of America's whaling industry.
Primarily self-taught, Albert Bierstadt began his professional career in 1850 when he advertised his services as a
drawing instructor. Three years later he departed for Europe, hoping Johann Peter Hasenclever (1810-1853), a
distant relative and prominent member of the Dusseldorf school of artists, would help him obtain formal instruction.
Hasenclever died suddenly, however, shortly before Bierstadt's arrival. When Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868) and
Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910) came to his aid Bierstadt found, unexpectedly, American rather than German
mentors.
After nearly three years in Dusseldorf, Bierstadt joined Whittredge on an extended sketching tour through Germany,
Switzerland, and Italy. Following a winter in Rome and a sketching tour to Naples and Capri, Bierstadt returned to
New Bedford in the fall of 1857. Described as a "timid, awkward, unpolished specimen of a Yankee" when he arrived in Dusseldorf in 1853, Bierstadt returned to New Bedford four years later a socially poised and technically mature painter.
In the spring of 1858 he made his New York debut when he contributed a large painting of Lake Lucerne and the Swiss Alps to the annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design. Critics were dazzled by Bierstadt's technical expertise; within weeks he was elected an honorary member of the academy. Bierstadt's European apprenticeship served him well the following spring when he journeyed west for the first time, joining Frederick W. Lander's survey party bound for the Rocky Mountains. Though not the first artist to see or even paint the Rockies, Bierstadt was the first who brought with him superior technical skills and considerable experience painting European alpine peaks. For Americans eager to finally see the mountains a generation of travelers had described as "America's alps," Bierstadt's credentials were near perfect.
By late September 1859 Bierstadt had returned to New Bedford laden with field sketches, stereo photographs, and Indian artifacts. Within three months he had moved to New York, established himself in the Tenth Street Studio Building, and begun to exhibit the western paintings that would soon make his reputation. He completed the most important of these, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (Metropolitan Museum, New York), in the spring of 1863
just weeks before he set off on his second journey west. Accompanied by Fitz Hugh Ludlow, a celebrated writer who later published a book about their overland adventure, Bierstadt traveled to the Pacific Coast. He spent several weeks in Yosemite Valley completing the plein air studies he would later use to compose several of his most important paintings. Following a trip north through Oregon to the Columbia River, Bierstadt and Ludlow returned east. Utilizing studies gathered during all stages of his journey, Bierstadt completed, by the end of the decade, a remarkable series of large scale paintings that not only secured his position as the premier painter of the western American landscape but also offered a war-torn nation a golden image
of their own Promised Land.
In 1867 Bierstadt and his bride set sail for London. It was a triumphant return for the emigrant's son who had arrived in Europe fourteen years earlier an eager but impoverished student. Six months after his arrival Bierstadt was invited to exhibit two of his most important paintings (both of which had been purchased by English railroad entrepreneurs), privately before Queen Victoria. During the more than two years he remained abroad, Bierstadt traveled, sketched, and cultivated the friendships that would sustain a European market for his work for many years.
In July 1871, Bierstadt and his wife boarded the recently completed transcontinental railroad bound for San Francisco. Apart from the artist's brief return to New York that autumn, they remained in California until October 1873. As he had since his days in Dusseldorf, Bierstadt spent much of his time traveling in remote regions completing the field studies he would later use to compose studio paintings.
In the fall of 1876 Rosalie Bierstadt, who had been diagnosed as consumptive and advised to spend the winter months in a warm climate, made her first trip to Nassau. Until her death in 1893, Rosalie spent increasingly longer periods in Nassau. Though Bierstadt continued to maintain his New York studio and travel widely in the West and Canada, he found new subject matter in the tropics during visits with his wife. In 1880 he exhibited one of the most successful of these pictures, The Shore of the Turquoise Sea (Private Collection), at the National Academy of Design. Though praised by some, the painting drew fire from critics who had found fault with his "theatrics" as early as the 1860s.
Critical disfavor and a falling market plagued Bierstadt during his later years. The most telling blow came in 1889 when the American committee charged with selecting works for the Exposition Universelle in Paris rejected Bierstadt's entry, The Last of the Buffalo (Corcoran Gallery of Art). Described as too large but more likely judged old-fashioned, the painting marked the end of Bierstadt's series of monumental western landscapes. Bierstadt died suddenly in New York on February 18, 1902, largely forgotten. Ironically, renewed interest in his work was sparked by a series of exhibitions in the 1960s highlighting not the great western paintings but rather the small oil sketches he had used as "color notes" for the panoramic landscapes that had brought him such success in
the 1860s.
Albert Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Prussia, on January 7, 1830, but he spent his early years in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, where his parents settled two years after his birth. Henry Bierstadt, the artist's father, found work as a
cooper in the capital of America's whaling industry.
Primarily self-taught, Albert Bierstadt began his professional career in 1850 when he advertised his services as a
drawing instructor. Three years later he departed for Europe, hoping Johann Peter Hasenclever (1810-1853), a
distant relative and prominent member of the Dusseldorf school of artists, would help him obtain formal instruction.
Hasenclever died suddenly, however, shortly before Bierstadt's arrival. When Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868) and
Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910) came to his aid Bierstadt found, unexpectedly, American rather than German
mentors.
After nearly three years in Dusseldorf, Bierstadt joined Whittredge on an extended sketching tour through Germany,
Switzerland, and Italy. Following a winter in Rome and a sketching tour to Naples and Capri, Bierstadt returned to
New Bedford in the fall of 1857. Described as a "timid, awkward, unpolished specimen of a Yankee" when he arrived in Dusseldorf in 1853, Bierstadt returned to New Bedford four years later a socially poised and technically mature painter.
In the spring of 1858 he made his New York debut when he contributed a large painting of Lake Lucerne and the Swiss Alps to the annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design. Critics were dazzled by Bierstadt's technical expertise; within weeks he was elected an honorary member of the academy. Bierstadt's European apprenticeship served him well the following spring when he journeyed west for the first time, joining Frederick W. Lander's survey party bound for the Rocky Mountains. Though not the first artist to see or even paint the Rockies, Bierstadt was the first who brought with him superior technical skills and considerable experience painting European alpine peaks. For Americans eager to finally see the mountains a generation of travelers had described as "America's alps," Bierstadt's credentials were near perfect.
By late September 1859 Bierstadt had returned to New Bedford laden with field sketches, stereo photographs, and Indian artifacts. Within three months he had moved to New York, established himself in the Tenth Street Studio Building, and begun to exhibit the western paintings that would soon make his reputation. He completed the most important of these, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (Metropolitan Museum, New York), in the spring of 1863
just weeks before he set off on his second journey west. Accompanied by Fitz Hugh Ludlow, a celebrated writer who later published a book about their overland adventure, Bierstadt traveled to the Pacific Coast. He spent several weeks in Yosemite Valley completing the plein air studies he would later use to compose several of his most important paintings. Following a trip north through Oregon to the Columbia River, Bierstadt and Ludlow returned east. Utilizing studies gathered during all stages of his journey, Bierstadt completed, by the end of the decade, a remarkable series of large scale paintings that not only secured his position as the premier painter of the western American landscape but also offered a war-torn nation a golden image
of their own Promised Land.
In 1867 Bierstadt and his bride set sail for London. It was a triumphant return for the emigrant's son who had arrived in Europe fourteen years earlier an eager but impoverished student. Six months after his arrival Bierstadt was invited to exhibit two of his most important paintings (both of which had been purchased by English railroad entrepreneurs), privately before Queen Victoria. During the more than two years he remained abroad, Bierstadt traveled, sketched, and cultivated the friendships that would sustain a European market for his work for many years.
In July 1871, Bierstadt and his wife boarded the recently completed transcontinental railroad bound for San Francisco. Apart from the artist's brief return to New York that autumn, they remained in California until October 1873. As he had since his days in Dusseldorf, Bierstadt spent much of his time traveling in remote regions completing the field studies he would later use to compose studio paintings.
In the fall of 1876 Rosalie Bierstadt, who had been diagnosed as consumptive and advised to spend the winter months in a warm climate, made her first trip to Nassau. Until her death in 1893, Rosalie spent increasingly longer periods in Nassau. Though Bierstadt continued to maintain his New York studio and travel widely in the West and Canada, he found new subject matter in the tropics during visits with his wife. In 1880 he exhibited one of the most successful of these pictures, The Shore of the Turquoise Sea (Private Collection), at the National Academy of Design. Though praised by some, the painting drew fire from critics who had found fault with his "theatrics" as early as the 1860s.
Critical disfavor and a falling market plagued Bierstadt during his later years. The most telling blow came in 1889 when the American committee charged with selecting works for the Exposition Universelle in Paris rejected Bierstadt's entry, The Last of the Buffalo (Corcoran Gallery of Art). Described as too large but more likely judged old-fashioned, the painting marked the end of Bierstadt's series of monumental western landscapes. Bierstadt died suddenly in New York on February 18, 1902, largely forgotten. Ironically, renewed interest in his work was sparked by a series of exhibitions in the 1960s highlighting not the great western paintings but rather the small oil sketches he had used as "color notes" for the panoramic landscapes that had brought him such success in
the 1860s.
Sanford Robinson Gifford, American, 1823 - 1880
Born and raised in the center of the Hudson River Valley, Sanford Gifford came from a family that supported and
encouraged his artistic leanings, and whose prosperity meant he could pursue painting without financial worries.
Gifford began training in New York City to be a portrait painter, but--inspired by the work of the American
landscapist Thomas Cole--turned to landscape painting. Gifford spent the summer of 1846 touring and sketching in
the Catskill and Berkshire mountains. By 1847, he had begun to show his work at the American Art-Union and the
National Academy of Design in New York, where he was elected an associate in 1850 and an academician in 1854.
In 1855, Gifford traveled to Europe, where he spent two-and-a-half years visiting the great repositories of art and
sketching scenery in England, Scotland, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In England, he
admired the color and light in the paintings of J.M.W. Turner, and discussed his work with the critic John Ruskin.
Gifford was also impressed by the work of the French landscape painters of the Barbizon school, but wrote in his
journal of the dangers of surrendering to a particular method or school of painting, lest they "usurp the place of
Nature."
When Gifford returned to the United States in 1857, he took up quarters in the new Tenth Street Studio Building in
New York City but left it nearly every summer to sketch in the countryside. Favorite settings in this period were the Catskills, the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains in Vermont, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and various locales in Maine and Nova Scotia. During the early years of the Civil War, Gifford served in New York's renowned Seventh Regiment. In 1868 Gifford went abroad for a second and last time, spending more than a year traveling in Europe and the Middle East. Along with notable artists and civic leaders of the day, he was a founder of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870. After his death in 1880, he was honored with the Metropolitan's first monographic retrospective and a memorial catalogue of his known pictures.
Born and raised in the center of the Hudson River Valley, Sanford Gifford came from a family that supported and
encouraged his artistic leanings, and whose prosperity meant he could pursue painting without financial worries.
Gifford began training in New York City to be a portrait painter, but--inspired by the work of the American
landscapist Thomas Cole--turned to landscape painting. Gifford spent the summer of 1846 touring and sketching in
the Catskill and Berkshire mountains. By 1847, he had begun to show his work at the American Art-Union and the
National Academy of Design in New York, where he was elected an associate in 1850 and an academician in 1854.
In 1855, Gifford traveled to Europe, where he spent two-and-a-half years visiting the great repositories of art and
sketching scenery in England, Scotland, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In England, he
admired the color and light in the paintings of J.M.W. Turner, and discussed his work with the critic John Ruskin.
Gifford was also impressed by the work of the French landscape painters of the Barbizon school, but wrote in his
journal of the dangers of surrendering to a particular method or school of painting, lest they "usurp the place of
Nature."
When Gifford returned to the United States in 1857, he took up quarters in the new Tenth Street Studio Building in
New York City but left it nearly every summer to sketch in the countryside. Favorite settings in this period were the Catskills, the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains in Vermont, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and various locales in Maine and Nova Scotia. During the early years of the Civil War, Gifford served in New York's renowned Seventh Regiment. In 1868 Gifford went abroad for a second and last time, spending more than a year traveling in Europe and the Middle East. Along with notable artists and civic leaders of the day, he was a founder of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870. After his death in 1880, he was honored with the Metropolitan's first monographic retrospective and a memorial catalogue of his known pictures.