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Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL STYLE

Considered the first major American painting movement, the Hudson River School emerged in the first half of the 19th century with landscape paintings that celebrated the young country’s natural beauty. Most of its leading painters were based in New York City where they exchanged ideas and traveled to the nearby Hudson River Valley and Catskills Mountains to re-create their vistas. At a time when the city was increasingly dense, the Hudson River School artists extolled the vast and pristine qualities of the American landscape, a sentiment that would inform the conservation movement.

American art was dominated by portraiture and historical scenes before Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School, began painting the Catskill Mountains in 1825. While the Hudson River School was informed by European art aesthetics, particularly the British focus on the sublime in nature, it was a style imbued with nationalism. The landscape painters who followed and studied under Cole would expand their focus from the Northeastern United States to places across the country, their work shared through prints and portfolios promoting an appreciation for the American wilderness — Niagara Falls, the mountain ranges that dot the American West and more — as the style blossomed during the mid-19th century.

Cole’s student Frederic Edwin Church as well as painters such as Albert Bierstadt, John Frederick Kensett, Asher Brown Durand and others became prominent proponents of the Hudson River School. The American art movement also had close ties to the literary world, including to authors like William Cullen Bryant, Henry David Thoreau and James Fenimore Cooper who wrote on similar themes. Although by the early 1900s the style had waned, and modernism would soon guide the following decades of art in the United States, the Hudson River School received renewed interest in the late 20th century for the dramatic way its artists portrayed the world.

Find a collection of authentic Hudson River School paintings, drawings and watercolors and more art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Hudson River School
Livestock Landscape
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven, a luminary of 19th-century Belgian art, wielded his brush with unparalleled mastery, capturing the timeless allure of pastoral landscapes and noble anim...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Ocean Landscape of Sailing off the Coast
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This coastal landscape is done by the famed painted William Frederick De Haas (1830-1880). This painting shows two men in a canoe paddling off the cliff shore in the foreground with ...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

19th C New Jersey Surfmen Rescuing Foundering Ship - GW Nicholson
Located in Exton, PA
Fine late 19th C oil painting on cradled wood panel by George Washington Nicholson. The painting is in very good cleaned condition and shows Surfmen rescuing a ship in distress. This...
Category

1870s Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Hudson River School Style Painting, Signed Brundell
Located in Larchmont, NY
G. Brundell Untitled, c. Early 20th Century Oil on canvas Sight: 10 x 18 in. Framed: 20 x 27 7/8 x 2 in.
Category

Early 20th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Hudson River School Style Painting, Signed Brundell
Located in Larchmont, NY
G. Brundell Untitled, c. Early 20th Century Oil on canvas Sight: 10 x 18 in. Framed: 19 7/8 x 27 7/8 x 2 in. Signed lower left
Category

Early 20th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Patriotic Oil Painting George Washington at Valley Forge
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This piece is a dramatic battle scene featuring the first president, George Washington. It includes a war snow scene with revolutionary soldiers placed around the hilled landscape. T...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

The Beekeeper's Daughter oil painting by Henry Bacon
Located in Hudson, NY
Signed and dated "Henry Bacon 1881" lower right. Provenance: private collection About this artist: A figure painter in the conservative tradition of the late 19th century French, H...
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1880s Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

19th Century White Mountain Landscape, Unknown American School
Located in Larchmont, NY
Unknown White Mountain Artist White Mountain Landscape, 19th Century Oil on board 5 x 9 1/4 in. Framed: 7 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Pleasant Thoughts oil painting by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait
Located in Hudson, NY
This painting is listed in the W.H. Cadbury and H.F. Marsh book Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait: Artist in the Adirondacks, Newark, Delaware, 1986, no.59.36t. It is hand-signed "AF Tait...
Category

1850s Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Antique Signed American Impressionist Framed Panoramic Blazing Sunset Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
An antique American oil painting in its original period frame. This tonalist work features a stunning luminescent quality of the sun reflecting off a lake surrounded by trees. Thi...
Category

1890s Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

19th Century American Genre Painting by Lemuel Maynard Wiles (1826-1905)
Located in New York, NY
American genre painting by artist Lemuel Maynard Wiles (1826-1905), "The Old Pippin Tree," painted in 1878 depicts the classic autumn activity of apple picking...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

The Rapelye Homestead, Bowery Bay, Long Island
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated lower left: W.R. Miller. 1877.
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sketching Among the Irises by George Herbert McCord (American: 1848-1909)
Located in New York, NY
"Sketching Among the Irises" by George Herbert McCord (1848-1909) is oil on canvas and measures 20 x 16 inches. The painting is signed by the artist at the lower left.
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"A Quiet Afternoon, " Enoch Wood Perry, Genre Scene Mother and Child at Fireplace
By Enoch Wood Perry Jr.
Located in New York, NY
Enoch Wood Perry, Jr. (1831 - 1915) A Quiet Afternoon, 1876 Oil on canvas 15 1/4 x 21 inches Signed and dated lower right Born in 1831 in Boston, Enoch Wood Perry, Jr, is internatio...
Category

1870s Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Portrait of an Italian Fencer, " John Frederick Kensett, Hudson River School
Located in New York, NY
John Frederick Kensett (1816 - 1872) Portrait of an Italian Fencer, circa 1845-47 Watercolor on wove paper 13 1/8 x 8 1/8 inches Signed with initials and inscribed lower right "J.F.K. Rome" From October 1845 through the spring of 1847, Kensett lived in Rome. He attended classes where he sketched from live models, and he sketched in the countryside outside Rome and around Florence, Perugia, and Venice, places he visited with his artist friends. He fulfilled commissions for paintings from Americans in Italy, and by 1847 his career was well established. Son of an English immigrant engraver, John Kensett lacked enthusiasm for that medium and became one of the most accomplished painters of the second generation of Hudson River School painters. His reputation is for Luminism, careful depiction of light, weather, and atmosphere as they affect color and texture of natural forms. He was particularly influenced by the painting of Asher Durand in that he focused on realism and detail rather than the highly dramatic views associated with Thomas Cole. Going to the western United States in the mid 1850s and the 1860s, he was the first of the Hudson River School painters to explore and paint the West. Kensett was born and raised in Cheshire, Connecticut, and learned his engraving from his father, Thomas Kensett with whom he worked in New Haven, Connecticut until 1829. He continued working until 1840 as an engraver of labels, banknotes and maps and was employed part of that time by the American Bank Note Company in New York City. There he met Thomas Rossiter, John Casilear, and other artists who urged him to pursue painting. In 1840, he and Rossiter, Asher Durand, and Casilear went to Europe where Kensett stayed for seven years and supported himself by doing engraving but became accomplished in landscape painting. Having sent canvases of Italian landscapes back to New York, he had a reputation for skillful painting that preceded him. When he returned to New York City in 1847, he was an "instant success" and very sought after by collectors. Two of his Italian landscapes had already been purchased by the American Art Union. By 1849, he was a full member of the National Academy of Design and was generally popular among his peers. His studio was a gathering place with travelers stopping by to see his canvases and to identify "precise locations in the Catskills or Newport or New England in the oil sketches and drawings that covered his walls." (Zellman 170). For the women, he was a popular bachelor, "romantic looking with high forehead and sensitive expression." (Samuels 262) He was also sought after by many organizations. Among his activities were serving on the committee to oversee the decoration of the United States Capitol in Washington DC, and becoming one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. An inveterate traveler, Kensett spent summers on painting excursions away from New York City. One of these trips was a special painting excursion with fifteen other artists sponsored by the B & O Railroad from Baltimore, Maryland to Wheeling, West Virginia. Unlike many of the Hudson River painters...
Category

1840s Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Paper

The Warning
Located in Saratoga Springs, NY
Edward Lamson Henry (American, (1841 - 1919)) “The Warning” Grisaille on paper mounted on board, signed lower left ‘E L Henry’ (partially obscured by frame) ...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Board, Oil, Laid Paper

“Worcester, Massachusetts”
Located in Southampton, NY
Oil on wood panel painting of a Worcester, Massachusetts view by local resident artist Mabel Blake. Signed M. Blake lower left. Circa 1880. Condition is good. The bucolic scene depicts a man in a boat...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Board, Oil

The Columbian Exhibition, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair
Located in Saratoga Springs, NY
Thaddeus Welch (American 1844-1919) The Columbian Exhibition, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair 70 x 35”, oil on board signed Request Price The C...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

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Two Boys Fishing
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Hudson River School figurative paintings for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Hudson River School figurative paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 19th Century, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Henry Bacon, John Frederick Kensett, George Herbert McCord, and William Rickarby Miller. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Oil Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Hudson River School figurative paintings, so small editions measuring 5.75 inches across are also available. Prices for figurative paintings made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $800 and tops out at $65,000, while the average work sells for $10,500.

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