Hudson River School Art

Robert Azensky Fine Art is pleased to offer original 1909 sketch study of oil painting "Homesteader Colorado Mountain" painting by Frank Tenney Johnson. It's always special to see the evolution of a painting through the plein air sketches ("studies") by the artist prior to its painting. Frank Tenney Johnson traveled throughout the Colorado Rockies sketching and painting western landscapes and native American and cowboy figurative art. Medium: Charcoal on paper Signature: Lower left corner Date: "1909" below signature Condition: Tonal aging and minor edge wear consistent with age and use. See images. Presented in black painted wood frame Mat size: 14"H x 11"W Paper size: 9"H x 6"W Image size (visible with mat): 8"H x 5.25"W Frank Tenney Johnson was born in Coucil Bluffs, Iowa, in 1874 not far from the Overland Trail. During his childhood, he saw the steady stream of people heading west in all forms of horse-drawn conveyance. This early exposure to the American West was critical in leading Johnson towards the Western landscape as an inspiration for his work. The resulting body of work is a moody and romantic depiction of a long-gone America, rendered in a style that has become practically a genre all its own. At the age of ten, Johnson moved from Iowa to Milwaukee, WI. There, he took an apprenticeship with F.W. Heinie, a prominent panoramic painter. After a year with Heinie, Johnson apprenticed for Richard Lorenz, a painter and former Texas Ranger who specialized in depictions of horses and western scenes. It was probably during his time with Lorenz that Johnson decided to focus on western subjects himself. He also started illustrating for regional papers and publications, in order to save money for further training. Further training, as with many of the artists who populated New Mexico in the early twentieth century, took place at the Art Students League in New York, where Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, John Twachtman, Kenneth Hayes Miller and F. Louis Mora were in the process of teaching perhaps the last great batch of pre-modernists. Though highly stimulated by the training, Johnson was only able to stay for five months, after which he returned to Milwaukee to work and save money in an effort to return to New York. He was able to do so after a time and, upon returning, established an important professional relationship with Emerson Hough, the editor of "Field & Stream" magazine. At Hough's urging (and on Hough's dime), Johnson traveled to Hayden, Colorado, where he tagged along with a group of cowpunchers in order to sketch their way of life. Though primarily an artist, Johnson also wrote accounts of his time in Colorado for "Field & Stream." After Colorado came Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Johnson attended a "Frontier Days" celebration; after Wyoming, Johnson traveled to New Mexico, where he observed the Navajos and their threatened way of life. This trip changed Johnson from an academic artist with an appreciation for the west to a truly western artist. Of particular interest to him, in stark contrast to other western artists of the time like Frederic Remington and C.M. Russell, were the more quotidian scenes of the West. Specifically, Johnson focused upon scenes featuring horses, especially at night. Johnson painted a great number of pieces that featured horses tied up outside of saloons, inns or trading posts for the night, the moonlit night punctuated by the warm glow from the lamps inside. In this, he can be considered a pioneer, as his night pieces still serve as the archetype for such work in western art. Johnson became quite successful through his work for "Field & Stream." He was chosen to illustrate books by the prominent writer Zane Grey, and his gallery shows sold briskly. In fact, one particular show, at the Grand Central Art Galleries at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, sold out opening night. In fact, one man had bought out the entire show: Amon Carter. Having achieved financial security and comfort, Johnson followed his good friend Clyde Forsythe to Alhambra, CA, where the two established residency and shared a studio. California treated Johnson well. He and Forsythe founded the gallery at the Los Angeles Biltmore...

Charming Hudson River school antique oil painting of a sailboat on a lake, circa 1880-90. Signed "R. Labarr." after Richard LaBarre Goodwin...

Luminous Hudson River School landscape of sunset over water with red buoy in foreground and sailing ships in background in the style of Alfred Thompson Briche...

George Curtis transcended the typical Hudson River School style with this painting. While in the Hudson River School, painters often created warmer landscapes of the American country...

This black and white etching by American painter and print maker of the Hudson River School in New York: Thomas Moran, is a rare Klackner #53 of the catalogue raisonné, depicting "The Harbor of Vera...

Signed and dated lower left: D. F. Bigelow / 70

Joseph John Englehart (1867-1915) was a prolific American landscape painter who painted in realist style. He was born on June 14, 1867 in Chicago, Illi...

Frederick J. Sykes (1851-1905) was a remarkable artist of the Hudson River School, renowned for capturing the serene beauty of tranquil landscapes. His work often featured New Englan...

This mid-19th-century oil painting by Danish-American artist Joachim Ferdinand Richardt (1819-1895) depicts a congregation observing a river baptism, probably in the Mississippi River. In 2009, at President Obama’s Inauguration luncheon, a panoramic view of Niagara was selected as the backdrop to his speech. It’s a breathtaking image, capturing the sublimity of the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls in all their iconic majesty. The ‘Maid-of-the-Mist’, negotiates the rapids, a mere speck within a broad expanse of water. While beyond, a colossal sheet of spray is sharply illuminated through passing clouds. It was painted by the son of a bookbinder, a humble Danish artist who travelled extensively across the United States to document its nature, buildings and civilization. Admired in his own lifetime, this unassuming adventurer produced scores of resplendent vistas but also numerous vignettes documenting everyday activities. Joachim Ferdinand Richardt was initially destined to become a carpenter but, thankfully, enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under three distinguished masters. Blessed with a skill for drawing, he was awarded medals and in 1839 began exhibiting at the prestigious Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition. In 1841, the Danish Royal Family acquired one of his works and six years later granted him a five-year stipend. Richardt trained at a time of exceptional creative output whereby Denmark was developing a clearer identity. Dubbed ‘National Romanticism’, artists were extolling their country’s natural beauty, while also celebrating humble folk life within rural environs. Stylistically, their work is somewhat comparable with German Romanticism...

Copyright 2023 Michael F. Meyer All rights Reserved. This painting, signed RSD on right side, has been verified by the late expert on Robert S. Duncanson, Joseph Ketner and comes with an authentication letter. This painting has exhibited and is published in Robert S. Duncanson and His Courageous Southern Travels. This painting is one of the many beautiful southern landscape scenes that Robert S. Duncanson painted in his courageous travels south. "Robert S. Duncanson born in 1819, was an African American Hudson River School artist who painted the south before the Civil War, until his death in 1872. Although widely famous during his lifetime, this forgotten artist’s courageous journey through the antebellum south has never before been exhibited or researched until now. His brilliance was in creating captivating landscape paintings that come alive to the viewer, by focusing on the minute details of nature and of the stories he wished to communicate. Robert Duncanson...

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 ...

F. Alexander Wust paints a stellar sunset over a hillside with light red color in his artwork entitled, “Sunset Landscape.”

"Catskill Mountains Landscape," by Hudson River School painter Edward Delavan Nelson (American, 1821-1871) is oil on canvas and measures 15 x 24 inches. It is signed with the artist'...

Signed and dated lower right: J.F. Cropsey 1887

Signed lower right: L.W.Prentice.

Substantial and period mid-century landscape of Monument Valley, Arizona of Navajo Hogan and rug weaving loom by Ralph Holmes (American, 1876-1963). c.194...

Hudson River School Style - The Homestead and Grist Mill 1942 In the Hudson River School style by A (K) Mathieu (American, 19th-20th C). Harvest time at the Homestead with a hay wago...

A beautifully preserved example of mid-19th-century American frame craftsmanship, this giltwood frame from the 1860s reflects the classical elegance favored by the Hudson River Schoo...

"Sailing Through Choppy Waters at Sunset" captures the dramatic beauty of the American maritime experience, evoking both the power of nature and the resilience of the human spirit. T...

Monogrammed and dated lower right: JW. 71; on verso: Indian Summer / By Jw. Williamson / N. Y. 1871 –

Signed lower right: J.R. Brevoort.

John George Brown (1831–1913) was a prominent British-born American painter, renowned for his genre paintings that vividly depict the everyday life of chi...

"Summer at the Farm," by Hudson River School painter James McDougal Hart (American, 1833-1915) is oil on canvas and measures 14 x 24 inches. It is signed and dated by Hart at the low...

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...

Signed lower right: RABlakelock

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

Signed lower right: JR Brevoort

Painted by Hudson River School artist William Richardson Tyler, "Low Tide, Crab Gathering" is oil on canvas and measures 8 x 13 inches. The painting is signed by Tyler at the lower l...

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...

Mount Hood From Clear Lake, Early 20th Century Large-Scale Panoramic Landscape Large-scale panoramic oil painting landscape of Mount Hood from Clear Lake by William M. Lemos (Ameri...

Beautiful Hudson River School Original gouache autumnal landscape of vivid sunset through forest by Charles Russell Loomis (American 1857 - 1936), circa 1880. Warm and cool tones wit...

Walpi Hopi Village, Arizona First Mesa Landscape by Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel. Significant southwestern painting of Hopi at Walpi Mesa in Arizona...

Painted by Hudson River School artist Laura Woodward (1834-1926), "Camel's Hump, Vermont" 1877 is oil on canvas and measures 14 x 24 inches. It is signe...

Lovely genre scene by American impressionist Henry Bacon (1839-1912). The Beekeeper's Daughter (1881) Oil on canvas 35" x 36" 42.5" x 33" x 3" framed Signed and dated "Henry Bacon ...

Signed lower right. A landscape and marine painter, William Ongley was born in England in 1836 and came to America with his family and settled in New York. His art studies took him ...

William Rickarby Miller Rapelyea House, New York, 1884 Signed and dated lower left Oil on canvas 20 x 30 inches Provenance: Kennedy Galleries, New York Born in Staindrop, County Durham, England, he was a portrait and landscape painter, especially appreciated for watercolor painting, which he sold through the American Art Union...

This is classic Norton Bush and one of our few Americans who traveled to South and Central America at this date to do these exotic scenes. He employed a Hudson River School techniqu...

Painted by Hudson River School artist William Ongley, "Through the Woods" is oil on canvas and measures 14 x 10 inches. The painting is signed by Ongley at the lower right. The work ...

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...

A prominent 19th century landscapist, Hudson River School painter James McDougal Hart's (1828-1901) A Day in November, 1863 is oil on canvas and measures 10.5 x 18 inches. The painti...

Painted by Historic Woman Artist Anna Freeland, "Gray's Inn, Iron Mountain and Wildcat River, Jackson, NH" depicts an autumn scene in the White Mountains. Painted in oil on canvas, the work measures 12 x 18 inches and is signed and dated 1891 at the lower left. The work is framed in a period appropriate frame and ready to hang. Anna C. Freeland (1837-1911) was born in New Hampshire to Mary Ann (Baker) and William Chamberlain. She received her education at the New Hampshire Conference Seminary and Female College in Tilton, New Hampshire. She studied art in Chicago under Walter Shirlaw, at the Académie Julian in Paris under Constant, and in Boston under William A. Rimmer and William M. Hunt.[1] An artist as well as a respected teacher, Freeland was a founder of the Worcester Art Students Club whose members included Joseph H. Greenwood and Frank J. Darrah. Incorporated in 1887, the club held meetings in the homes of its members. The club began holding meetings and exhibitions at the Worcester Art Museum following its opening in 1898.[2] Freeland offered instruction from her Worcester studio during the Winter months, and for over a decade, spent her summer working in her Jackson, New Hampshire studio.3 Her studio adjoined Gray’s Inn, a lodging establishment popular among artists. While busy executing figurative and floral works, as well as landscape and animal subjects, Freeland continued to teach. In 1886, she instructed a class of lady artists in Jackson.[4] In 1890, Freeland contributed several floral works as well as Portrait of Baby McClure, the infant daughter of an Art Students’ Club member, to the 10th annual exhibition of the club.[5] In 1902, Freeland was the instructor at an outdoor sketch class organized by the Newton Center Woman’s club.[6] In 1910, she exhibited with local artists including Joseph H. Greenwood at the Worcester Art Museum.[7] During her lifetime, Freeland exhibited locally and provided art instruction to notable artists including Walter Appleton Clark...

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...

"Charles River Meadows, Massachusetts" by Mark E. Slayton is a masterful landscape painting that embodies the beauty characteristic of the Hudson River School. As a prominent artist ...

Prominent Luminist Hudson River School painter.

Signed lower right in arrowhead: R.A. Blakelock

Signed lower right in arrowhead: R A Blakelock; on verso: A Spring Garden

Monogrammed lower left: ATBRICHER

Signed illegibly lower right

This stunning, original signed landscape painting by Charles Partridge Adams (1858-1942) captures the breathtaking beauty of a Colorado sunset along the Front Range, near Denver. The...

American artist Franklin Briscoe (1844-1903) known for his hirtorical and portrait paintings, paints a Civil War piece; it is a portrait of an officer with his white horse. The brus...

Wall was born in Ireland and arrived in New York in 1812. He was already a well trained artist and soon became well known for his watercolor views of the Hudson River Valley and surr...

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...

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...

"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...

Richard Law Hinsdale (1832–1874) was an American painter known for his contributions to landscape and genre painting during the mid-19th century, mostly in the Hudson River School. He received brief instruction from Alexander Emmons, Philip Hewins and Jared B Flagg as well as being exhibited in American art...

George Harvey was born in 1800 in Tottenham, England but moved to the United states at 20 years old and spent several years in the west before he established himself in New York City...

Signed and dated right of center: J.F. Cropsey / 1852

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...

"Little House in the Upstate New York Mountains" by C.H. Schmidt is a captivating painting that evokes a sense of rustic charm. Set against the backdrop of the majestic mountains of ...

This Hudson River School autumn landscape is done by the famed artist David Johnson. He studied at the national Academy of Design in New York. He was best known for the development o...

"New England Sunrise," 1910 by Hudson River School painter Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932) is oil on artists card-stock and measures 9.75 x 14 inches. The work is signed by DeForest and dated Sept. 17, 1910 at lower left. The work is framed in an elegant, period appropriate frame, and ready to hang. Lockwood de Forest was born in New York in 1850 to a prominent family. He grew up in Greenwich Village and on Long Island at the family summer estate in Cold Spring Harbor. As was customary for a cultivated family in the Gilded Age, the de Forests made frequent trips abroad. Excursions to the great museums, which were prominent on the de Forests agenda, deepened the young Lockwood's familiarity with European painting and sculpture. Though he had begun drawing and painting somewhat earlier, it was during a visit to Rome in 1868 that nineteen-year-old de Forest first began to study art seriously, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844–1905). More importantly, on the same trip, Lockwood met one of America’s most celebrated painters, (and his maternal great- uncle by marriage) Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who quickly became his mentor. DeForest accompanied Church on sketching trips around Italy and continued this practice when they both returned to America in 1869. Early on in his career, de Forest made a habit of recording the date and often the place of his oil sketches, as to create a visual diary of his travels. Lockwood’s profession as a landscape painter can be primarily attributed to Frederic E. Church and his belief in the young artist’s talent. De Forest often visited Church in the Hudson River community of Catskill where, in addition to sketching trips and afternoons of painting, he assisted with the architectural drawings and planning of Olana. In 1872, de Forest took a studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. During these formative years de Forest counted among his friend’s artists such as Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–80), George Henry Yewell (1830–1923), John Frederick Kensett (1816–72), Jervis McEntee (1828–91), and Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932). Over the next decade de Forest experienced success as a painter. He exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in 1872, and made two more painting trips abroad, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, traveling to the major continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa. His trip to the Middle East and the library at Church’s home, Olana, established his interest in design during his mid-twenties. From about 1878 to 1902, landscape painting was overshadowed by his activities and preoccupation with East Indian architecture and décor, a style that became quite fashionable in late nineteenth century America. From 1879-1883, de Forest founded Associated Artists along with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler...

Signed lower left in arrowhead: R. A. Blakelock

Signed and dated lower left: W. Whittredge 1861

Signed lower left: Blakelock

David Johnson was born in 1827 in New York City. Beginning in 1845, he studied for two years in the antique school of the National Academy of Design. His classmates and colleagues in...

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.

George Owen's "Resting Beneath the Trees by the Stream" is a quintessential Hudson River School painting that encapsulates the majesty and sublime beauty of the American landscape. T...