Hudson River School Paintings

Signed lower left: Blakelock

Signed lower right in arrowhead: R.A. Blakelock

Stunning Hudson River School landscape by George Lafayette Clough (1824-1901). High Bridge and Croton Waterworks, Harlem River, ca. 1870. Oil on canvas measures 14 x 21 inches; 26 x 33 inches in original frame. Signed lower left. Old repair of small diagonal puncture measuring 1/2 inch in length to the right of ship sail. Otherwise no damage or conservation to painting. Original frame has several areas of damage and loss and will require conservation. George Lafayette Clough was born September 18, 1824, in Auburn, New York, and was that city's leading landscapist and, known as a Hudson River School painter, became Auburn's most noted resident painter of the mid-century. His mother was widowed shortly after his birth, and he was raised without paternal influence. He had little formal education and was employed by the age of ten. By age fifteen he had taken up painting, and his first and informal art influence came from the portraitist, Randall Palmer. In 1844 Clough opened his own studio in Auburn. About that time Charles Loring Elliott...

Summer Pastoral by Hudson River School artist William Hart (1823-1894) is oil on canvas and measures 9.5 x 16 inches. The painting is signed by Hart at the lower left. The work is fr...

Impressive early American Hudson River School landscape oil painting by Jasper Holman Lawman (1825 - 1906). Framed. Oil on board. Signed. Image size, 10H by 16L.

"Columbia River Gorge" by Cyrenius Hall is a quintessential example of the Hudson River School. Hall, known for his masterful landscapes, captures the awe-inspiring grandeur of the C...

Signed lower left in arrowhead: R. A. Blakelock

This 19th-century American School river landscape painting by an unknown artist embodies the essence of the era’s reverence for nature and the burgeoning national identity. These wor...

In Mountain Stream, Henry Boese presents a majestic and serene vision of the American wilderness. A crisp, rushing stream flows through the heart of the composition, cascading over r...

This distinguished oil portrait of President John Tyler was painted by William Garl Brown, one of the South’s most respected portrait artists of the mid-19th century. Capturing Tyler...

This richly detailed Hudson River School painting by William Guy Wall presents a striking view of a waterfall near Hot Springs, Virginia. Painted with warm, earthy tones and a glowin...

THE WATERFALL - Oil on canvas cm. 55x70 by Paolo De Robertis, Italy 2002. The painting is inspired by the paintings of Thomas Hill, an American landscape painter belonging to the H...

Alfred S. Wall (American, 1825-1896) Untitled (Building the Railroad), 1859 Oil on canvas 14 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches Signed and dated lower left For Christmas, 2008, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured Alfred Wall's painting, Old Saw Mill from the collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA. It was painted in 1851 in the town of Lilly, Pennsylvania in the Allegheny Mountains. The newspaper description stated that "though the saw mill is long gone, it still conveys all the warmth and coziness of this time of year. The article, written by Patricia Lowry, continued: At first glance, Alfred S. Wall's painting of a saw mill in snowy woods triggers nostalgia for the coziness of a log cabin, the smell of a wood-burning fire and the warming of chilled hands and feet beside it. But as sentimental as it seems on the surface, Mr. Wall's painting has a deeper and unexpected context. This is more than a painting about sled-riding children and early industry planted in the middle of virgin forest. Intended or not, this is a painting about conquering the great divide of the Allegheny Mountains. For the third consecutive year, the Post-Gazette features a winter-scene painting on the cover of the Christmas Day newspaper. This year's painting, Old Saw Mill, was selected by co-publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block and executive editor David Shribman during a visit to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg. Mr. Wall, listed as a portrait painter in the 1850 census, was about 26 when he painted Old Saw Mill in 1851. The self-taught artist was born in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, to William and Lucy Wall, who'd emigrated from England around 1820. An artistic sensibility ran in the family: William was a sculptor who carved ornate tombstones here; Alfred's children, A. Bryan and Bessie, were landscape painters, as was Alfred's older brother, William Coventry Wall. For more than a century the Walls formed a prominent art dynasty in Pittsburgh, and Alfred, eventually a partner in the city's most prestigious art gallery, was well known as a painter, dealer and restorer. In Old Saw Mill, two wood cutters, each holding an axe, meet outside the mill; one points in the direction of the forest. On the other side of the stream, one child pulls another down the hillside on a sled. Just behind the hill's slope, the roof of a building appears, perhaps the home of the sawyer. The luminous, late afternoon light comes from the northwest, casting lengthening shadows on the snow under a darkening sky. The saw mill in "Old Saw Mill" likely would have been impossible to track down had Mr. Wall, presumably, not written on the back of the painting: "old saw mill near Jct. 4, Portage RR, Pa." "There was no Junction 4," said Mike Garcia, park ranger at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, about 90 miles east of Pittsburgh near Gallitzen, Cambria County. "But there was an Inclined Plane No. 4 at Lilly, and there was a saw mill there." In fact, there were at least six saw mills at Lilly over the years, said longtime resident Jim Salony, president of the Lilly-Washington Historical Society. But when he saw an image of the painting, Mr. Salony had no trouble coming up with a location. While there are no known photographs of the saw mill, he believes it stood near the intersection of Portage and Washington streets, next to Bear Rock Run. Mr. Salony, retired academic dean at Mount Aloysius College, didn't know exactly when the mill was torn down, but it's been gone since at least the late 1800s. He was pleased to learn of the painting, even though that knowledge came too late for inclusion in a new book about Lilly, The Spirit of a Community, for which he served as primary author and editor. It runs to more than 700 pages. For a little town -- population 869 last year -- Lilly has a lot of history. Nestled in a bowl on the western slope of the Allegheny Mountains about 3 miles south of Cresson, Lilly was first settled in 1806 by Joseph Meyer and his family, who named their 332-acre land patent Dundee. Although the Meyers had left by 1811, other settlers followed, but the community didn't flourish until the 1830s, when the Allegheny Portage Railroad began its 23-year-run through the town. For 200 years the Alleghenies had stood as an impediment to trade and travel between Pittsburgh and the east. A canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh would change that and compete with New York's Erie Canal. But a portage railroad would have to be built, on which teams of horses would lead the canal boats over the mountains. Engineer Sylvester Welch began his surveying from the small settlement at Lilly. The railroad would require 10 inclined planes, some quite steep, between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. To build it, trees had to be cut along a 120-foot-wide right-of-way for 36 miles, along which track and engine houses had to be built. William Brown, who owned the saw mill on Bear Rock Run, built at least one of the engine houses at Inclined Plane No. 4; an 1834 contract also included fencing the dwelling lots at the head and foot of the plane. Lilly is located at what was the foot of Inclined Plane No. 4., giving the community one of its early informal names, Foot of Four. Named in 1883 for Richard Lilly, who'd completed the grist mill there, Lilly had another early name: Hemlock, so dubbed by a Portage Railroad traveler who smelled the bark stripped from the trees at the saw mill. Because there isn't another Allegheny Portage Railroad location like it, where a cut in the mountains opens into a bowl, Mr. Salony thinks it was Lilly that Charles Dickens wrote about following his trip from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh on the Pennsylvania Canal in late March 1842, describing what he saw after emerging from "the bottom of the cut": "It was very pretty while traveling, to look down into a valley full of light and softness, catching glimpses through the tree-tops of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, who we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homeward; families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out to-morrow's work; and we riding onward, high above them, like a whirlwind." To get to Lilly, Mr. Wall may have taken the Pennsylvania Canal from his home in Allegheny City, now the North Side. He'd married young, at 21, to Sarah Carr in 1846, the same year he began his career as an artist. By 1880 they were living in a brick townhouse at 104 (later 814) Arch St., now demolished. Across the river in Pittsburgh he shared a studio at 67 Fourth Ave. with his brother William; they later moved to Burke's Building, today the city's oldest office building at 209-211 Fourth. But often they worked outdoors, sometimes as part of the colony of artists that grew up around painter George Hetzel beginning in the late 1860s at Scalp Level...

This original Hudson River School realist interpretation of the Chapel of the Madonna di Vitela, still standing in exceedingly picturesque Tuscany invites you into the heart of one ...

Alexandre Le Bihan. French ( b.1839 - d.1924 ). Niagara Falls. Oil On Canvas. Signed Lower Left. Image size 23.2 inches x 49.2 inches ( 59cm x 125cm ). Frame size 28.9 inches x 55.1...

"Young Lady Sewing on Rocking Chair" by an 1860s American School artist is a charming watercolor painting that captures a traditionally domestic moment...

James Brade Sword (1839 - 1915) Couple in the Field Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches Signed lower left After a childhood in Macao, China, James Brade Sword started out in life, after hi...

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...

Painted by Hudson River School artist Henry A. Ferguson (1845-1911), "Autumn Landscape (NH)" is oil on canvas and measures 9 x 15 inches. The painting is signed and dated 1864, at th...

Painted by Hudson River School artist William G. Boardman (1815-1895), "White Mountains in New Hampshire" is oil on canvas and measures 28 1/8 x 38 inches. The painting is signed and...

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...

Antique American Hudson River School artist working in Italy. Oil on canvas. Framed nicely. No signature found.

George Smillie (1840-1921) was an American landscape painter renowned for his serene and meticulously detailed depictions of the natural world. Smillie’s work is characterized by its...

Norton Bush (1834-1894) Tropical Landscape Oil on board, 8 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches (22.2 x 29.8 cm) Signed lower left: N. Bush Provenance Private collection, New York; Private collection, Pennsylvania First noted for his portraits, marine views, and East Coast landscapes, Norton Bush became best known for his tropical views of Central and South America. He studied in New York City with the Hudson River school painter Jasper Cropsey and received criticism from another Hudson River school painter, Frederic Edwin Church. Like many who worked in the Hudson River school style, Bush also sought to inspire viewers with an expansive view of nature that dwarfed the relative influence and position of man. He first became interested in painting exotic...

George Hobbs’ A Garden in Montone, France invites viewers into a serene moment of everyday beauty nestled in the heart of the French countryside. The composition features a narrow la...

John A Mooney is a Virginian artist who has been known to paint trompe loeil and landscape paintings. Born in Buffalo, New York, John A. Mooney (1843-1918) traveled to Georgia to enl...

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 internati...

Alfred Thompson Bricher, an American artist celebrated for his exquisite marine and landscape paintings, created "Boats Sailing Between Mountains." This piece exemplifies Bricher’s m...

William Hart was an influential figure in the art world, best known for his contributions as a landscape painter during the 19th century. Born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1823, Hart imm...

"Rocky Seascape" by Lemuel D. Eldred is a captivating painting that masterfully captures the raw beauty and power of the sea. Eldred, an accomplished 19th-century American marine art...

Samuel Coleman's "Fishing Along the Meder River at the Edge of Vic, Spain" is a captivating painting that beautifully captures both the charm of the riverside, and the beauty of the ...

John Fery (1859 - 1934) Western Lake Landscape, circa 1920 Oil on canvas 21 x 23 1/4 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Private Collection, New York Born in Austria, John Fery earned a strong reputation for dramatic paintings of western mountain landscape in the United States. Glacier National Park in northwest Montana was a popular subject for him. He was raised in a prominent, wealthy family that lived on an estate about nineteen miles northeast of Salzburg. His mother was Hungarian, and his father was born in Bohemia. S ome sources have written that he studied art in Dusseldorf, Germany with Peter Jansen, and also in Munich, Venice and Karlsruhe. But his "name does not appear in the records of the major art schools in any of these places, nor is there any record of his name at either the Vienna or Budapest academies." (Merrill 26) It is possible, however, that he received private instruction, and because of the sophistication of his painting, sources think it unlikely that he was self taught. An early interest in wilderness scenery led him to painting American landscapes and hunting scenes. In the mid 1880s, he came to America and lived in the German community in Milwaukee, and then in 1886, brought his family to the United States. His wife, Mary Rose Kraemer (1862-1940), was born in Switzerland, and they had one child born near Munich and two others born in the United States. From 1886 to 1888, they lived in New York, and by 1890, Fery had made his first trip West. He visited Yellowstone Park in 1891, and indicated in his writings that he had been there even earlier. From 1892 to 1893, he led European nobility on hunting expeditions to the American Northwest, made possible by the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad...

Régis François Gignoux (1816–1882) was a French-American landscape painter known for his contributions to the Hudson River School. Gignoux quickly became an integral part of the Amer...

This captivating artwork, titled "Children Feeding the Horse", is masterfully executed in rich tones. It depicts two children tenderly feeding a gentle white horse against a familiar...

Signed lower left: Blakelock

"Cathedral Spires, South Dakota," attributed to the accomplished painter Grafton Tyler Brown, is a stunning representation of the American landscape, i...

"Reading After School," attributed to Edward Lamson Henry, offers a glimpse into the everyday moments of 19th-century American life. Known for his meticulous detail and his ability t...

Walking Home in the Snow by John Carleton Wiggins is a captivating winter landscape that evokes the tranquil beauty of rural life. The painting depicts a lone figure, likely a young ...

Virginia Granbery (1831-1921) was an accomplished American artist known for her work in watercolor and oil paintings. Granbery's works predominantly featured landscapes, floral studi...

Marco Aurelio Tricca (American, 1880-1969), Pastoral Landscape Scene, Oil on Canvas mounted on Board, 1929, signed and dated to verso, carved wood frame. Image: 24" H x 30" W; frame:...

Signed lower right: Bradford

Painted by Hudson River School artist Mary Josephine Walters (1837-1883), "Autumn River with Punt in the Reeds" is oil on canvas and measures 13.25 x 23.75 inches. It is inscribed in...

Prominent Luminist Hudson River School painter

Richard Clague was sent to school in Geneva to study painting with Jean-Charles Ferdinand Humbert (1813-1881) where Richard developed a preference for landscape painting. Following his father's death in December, 1836, he received a substantial inheritance which allowed him to continue his studies. After completing his studies, he travelled to Morocco, Algiers and other destinations in the Middle East where he kept a sketchbook (now in the New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana) and developed an interest in Oriental subject matter. Although he was largely trained in Europe, he settled in Louisiana, becoming part of the "Bayou School".He regularly painted with William Buck...

Theodore E. Pine (1828-1905) was an American artist known for his portraits and genre paintings. Pine specialized in portraiture, capturing the likenesses and personalities of his su...

Leading Hudson River School Painter Famous for New England Views.

Tower of Babel, Colorado Canyon 12 ⅞" x 14 ½" 20 ¾" x 22 ¾" x 4 ¼" framed Verso sketch of fall trees on a hillside. Provenance: The estate of Samuel Colman. Purchased by private c...

George Henry Smillie was an American painter and etcher. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1882. He often painted both in oils and in water colour. His favourit...

Signed lower right: W Whittredge

Prominent Luminist Hudson River School painter.

This charming Hudson River School study by Virginia Granbery captures a tender and distinctly American moment: children playing baseball in a sunlit clearing. Painted by one of the f...

A wonderful landscape by American artist Thomas Mickell Burnham (1818-1866). Burnham was born in Boston, MA and received informal art training early on, traveling abroad before relo...

Signed and dated 1877. Mortimer Smith, a lesser-known yet skilled artist of the Hudson River School, captured the untamed beauty of the American landscape with remarkable depth. This painting presents a seacoast scene with a solitary fisherman, with his boat during the tide. The rugged cliffs frame the composition, their weathered surfaces telling the story of time and nature’s relentless forces. Sunlight filters through the mist, casting a halo glow in the sky, while waves crash against the shore in rhythmic motion. Smith’s brushwork conveys both the serenity and power of the natural world, inviting the viewer to step into the scene under nature's power and beauty. Although born in Jamestown, New York, Mortimer Smith would become well-known as a Detroit architect and artist by the end of the nineteenth century. Little is known of Smith's earlier years; however, scholars speculate that he studied in Oberlin and Sandusky, Ohio before moving to Detroit in 1855. There, the artist flourished and became famous for his crisp landscapes of local scenery, including his beloved winter scenes. In addition to his artistic career, Smith founded a successful architectural firm by the name of Smith, Hynchman and Grylls; Smith's reputation in the visual arts was often overshadowed by his draftsmanship as an architect. Nevertheless, he was a vital force in Detroit's arts community exhibiting his works in venues including the Detroit Art...

Hudson River School artist Charles Wilson Knapp's (1823-1900) "Fisherman by a Brook" is oil on canvas and measures 24 x 20 inches. The work is signed by Knapp at the lower left. The ...

Painted by Hudson River School artist Ida H. Stebbins (b. 1851), "View of South Pond, New York," 1879 is oil on canvas, measures 23 x 33 1/2 inches, and is signed and dated 1879 at the lower left. The work is framed in an elegant Barbizon style frame and ready to hang. Ida H. Stebbins was born in January 1851 in Chelsea, Massachusetts to Mary and Isaac Stebbins, a teacher. Though scant records remain of Stebbins’ artistic training or career, various personal details of her life have been gleaned from contemporary newspapers and federal documents. By the time View of South Pond, New York was painted in 1879, she was living in Boston. Like many artists of her generation, Stebbins likely traveled throughout the Northeast region, gaining inspiration for her paintings from the landscape of New England and New York. Stebbins was likely visiting upstate New York when she painted this sweeping view of South Pond and the surrounding mountains near Long Lake in the Adirondacks just south of Deerland. Here, Stebbins captures the stunning vermillion, burnt orange and brown tones of the autumn landscape with the style and precise rendering often seen in paintings produced by the Hudson River School. Shortly after the completion of View of South Pond, New York, Stebbins married Frank H. Slack, a clerk, in her hometown of Chelsea on December 14, 1881 at the age of thirty. The couple moved to Hotel Comfort in Boston, where their son, Roland Stewart Slack was born on May 22, 1883. It seems likely that her husband died in the mid-1880s since on December 3, 1889, records indicate that Ida and Roland changed their last name back to her maiden name of Stebbins. Roland Stewart Stebbins (1883-1974) inherited his mother’s interest in art, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Columbia University in New York, and the Art Students League of New York. He also studied at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière and the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Today, he is remembered for his marine and genre paintings and for his legacy as a respected professor of art education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On January 1, 1890, Ida married her second husband, Timothy Jarvis, in Somerville, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Ida Hazel Jarvis, was born soon after in 1893. However, the child suffered paralysis from a brain tumor...

This Oil on Wood American Landscape painting is done by John Mackie Falconer (1820-1903) and is signed center left. The scene is of New Haven Connecticut l...

Signed lower right & dated 1888.

Signed lower right. An itinerant portrait, miniature, and landscape painter, Ambrose Andrews had a wide-ranging career geographically that saw him in many regions including New York (1829-31), Connecticut (1837), Texas (1837-1841) and Louisiana (1841-42). After 1844, he was active in St. Louis, New York City, Buffalo, New York, Vermont and Canada. He was born in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 1824, attended the National Academy of Design. Andrews exhibited paintings at the Republic of Texas Capitol...

Signed lower left: R. Gignoux

Régis Francois Gignoux was a distinguished nineteenth-century artist whose work illuminated the sublime aspects of the American landscape. He was born in Lyon, France and trained at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where his instructor, the history painter Paul-Hipployte Delaroche, encouraged his interest in landscape painting. He traveled to the United States in 1840, and immediately showed interest in American Landscapes. He immediately settled in New York and painted many well known sites of the United States: Niagara Falls, the Catskill Mountains, Mount Washington, and Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. He is most famous for his winter scenes, but shows beautiful landscapes year round. Gignoux quickly established himself within the leading Hudson River School circles of the time. He took sketching trips with Frederic Church and John Frederick Kensett. Today, his paintings are in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, and the Georgia Museum of Art. This beautiful piece comes from the estate of the artist in New Jersey, and Meyer Fine Art...