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Hudson River School Art

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
Picnic On The Mohawk
Located in Milford, NH
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...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Thunder Shower on Lago Maggiore, North Italy
By Thomas Ralph Spence
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Thomas Ralph Spence’s "A Thunder Shower on Lago Maggiore, North Italy" captures a dramatic moment of nature’s power over the serene landscape of Lago Maggiore. Known for his architec...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Mount Chocorua
Located in New York, NY
Leading Hudson River School Painter Famous for New England Views.
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

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 Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sketch of the Well
By Frank Anderson
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Frank Anderson's "Sketch of the Well" is a delicate and evocative drawing rendered in graphite on paper. Created in 1865, this work captures the simplicity and intimacy of a moment c...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Paper, Graphite

Rainbow Over the Niagara Falls, NY
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
"Rainbow Over Niagara Falls, NY" by John Henry Hill is a breathtaking painting that beautifully captures the awe-inspiring grandeur of one of nature's most magnificent wonders. In th...
Category

Early 20th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Young Ladies Sewing
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
"Young Ladies Sewing" by Francis Blackwell Mayer is a charming portrayal of domestic life in the 19th century. Painted by the American artist known for his genre scenes and historica...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Watercolor Landscape of Natural Bridge, Virginia
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
William Guy Wall, a renowned artist of the early 19th century, is celebrated for his exquisite landscape paintings, and particularly with this watercolor. This painting, titled, "Nat...
Category

Early 19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Oil on Wood Landscape of Fort Nathan Hale, Black Rock Fort, CT
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
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...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Wood, Oil

Oil Portrait of Child and Baby Sisters Playing
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This beautiful oil on canvas painting of two sisters playing by the famous American Artist John G Brown has been lined. There is a slight touch up, and i...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

1860s American Gilt Frame Eli Wilner Historic Period Collection Hudson River
Located in Jacksonville, FL
An Exceptional Gilt Frame with Historic Provenance This 1860s American Hudson River School frame is a remarkable artifact in its own right, enriched by...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Wood

Tower of Babel, Colorado Canyon oil painting by Samuel Colman
Located in Hudson, NY
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...
Category

Early 20th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Oil Landscape titled "A View of Irvington on Hudson"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
"A View of Irvington on Hudson," a watercolor by John Henry Hill, captures the picturesque beauty of Irvington, a charming village nestled along the Hudson River. Hill, celebrated fo...
Category

Late 18th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Watercolor River Landscape titled "Enjoying Calm Waters"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
"Enjoying Calm Waters" is a captivating 19th-century American School watercolor landscape that epitomizes the beauty of a northern American scene. This exquisite piece showcases the ...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

View of South Pond, New York, 1879 by Ida H. Stebbins (American, b. 1851)
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Watercolor of Natural Bridge, VA
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
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...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Fall Landscape, Catskills, with Hikers
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower left: Blakelock
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Oil

Grapes and Peach
By George Cope
Located in Saratoga Springs, NY
Signed lower right & dated 1888.
Category

1880s Hudson River School Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Portrait of Man with Shovel
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This painting depicts a man standing confidently with a shovel. This is an American School, likely Hudson River School drawing from the 1860s or 1870s. This 19th century unsigned painting...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Paper, Graphite

Mount Washington, New Hampshire
Located in Saratoga Springs, NY
Edmund Darch Lewis (1835-1910) Mount Washington, New Hampshire 50 x 58 inches, signed & dated 1859 Description The area near Mount Washington in New Hampshire was visited by many ...
Category

1850s Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Distant Horizon
Located in Saratoga Springs, NY
Edward Moran (American, 1829 - 1901) Boy with Dog on Dock Oil on canvas Signed lower left 22 x 36 inches Provenance: Sotheby's Sale no. 3255 Oct. 27-28, 1977 Page 58 Price on reques...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Day in June, Scene Eastchest, New York
Located in Missouri, MO
A Day in June, Scene Eastchest, New York Edward Gay (Irish, American, 1837-1928) Oil on Canvas Complimented by original frame in great condition Signed and Dated Lower Right Titled a...
Category

1890s Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

The Jolly Flat Boat Men
By George Caleb Bingham
Located in Missouri, MO
The Jolly Flat Boat Men, 1847 After George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811-1879) Engraved by Thomas Doney (French, active New York 1844-1849) Engraving with Hand-Coloring Published by The American Art-Union, New York (1838-1851) Printed by Powell and Co. 18 x 24 inches 32 x 38 inches with frame In 1847, the American Art-Union purchased Bingham’s painting "The Jolly Flat Boat Men" (1846; National Gallery of Art) directly from the artist. The subscription-based organization, founded in 1838 as the Apollo Association, boasted nearly ten-thousand members at this date. For an annual fee of five dollars, each received a large reproductive engraving and was entered in a lottery to win original artworks exhibited at the Art-Union’s Free Gallery. Aimed at educating the public about contemporary American art, the organization developed an impressive distribution network that reached members in every state. The broad circulation of the Art-Union's print helped to establish Bingham's reputation and made his river scene famous. Born in Augusta County, Virginia in the Shenandoah River Valley, George Caleb Bingham became known for classically rendered western genre, especially Missouri and Mississippi River scenes of boatmen bringing cargo to the American West and politicians seeking to influence frontier life. One of his most famous river genre paintings was The Jolly Flatboatmen completed in several versions in 1846. This first version of this painting is in the Manoogian Collection at the National Gallery of Art. Fame resulted for this work when it was exhibited in New York at the American Art Union whose organizers made an engraving of 10,000 copies and distributed it to all of their members. Paintings such as Country Politician (1849) and County Election (1852) and Stump Speaking (1854) reflected Bingham's political interests. In 1819, as an eight-year old, he moved to Boon's Lick, Missouri with his parents and grandfather who had been farmers and inn keepers in the Shenandoah Valley near Rockingham, Virginia. Reportedly as a child there, he took every opportunity to escape supervision to travel the River and watch the marine activity. His father died in 1827, when his son was sixteen years old. His mother had encouraged his art talent, but art lessons were not easily obtainable. In order to earn money, he apprenticed to a cabinet maker but determined to become an artist. By 1835, he had a modest reputation as a frontier painter and successfully charged twenty dollars per portrait in St. Louis. "His portraits had become standard decorations in prosperous Missouri homes." (Samuels 46). In 1836, he moved to Natchez, Mississippi and there had the same kind of career, only was able to charge forty dollars per portrait. He remained largely self taught until 1837, when he, age 26 and using the proceeds from his portraiture, studied several months at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He later said that he learned much of his atmospheric style and classically balanced composition by copying paintings in collections in St. Louis and Philadelphia and that among his most admired painters were Thomas Cole, John Vanderlyn, and William Sidney Mount. Between 1856 and 1859, Bingham traveled back and forth to Dusseldorf, Germany, where he studied the work of genre painters. Some critics think these influences were negative on his work because during that time period, he abandoned his luminist style that had brought him so much public affirmation. Bingham credited Chester Harding (1792-1866) as being the earliest and one of the most lasting influences on his work. Harding,a leading portraitists when Bingham was a young man, had a studio in Franklin, near Bingham's home town. In 1822, when Bingham was ten years old, he watched Harding finish a portrait of Daniel Boone. Bingham recalled that watching Harding with the Boone portrait was a lasting inspiration and that it was the first time he had ever seen a painting in progress. Harding suggested to Bingham that he begin doing portraiture by finding subjects in the river men, which, of course, opened the subject matter that established fame and financial success for Bingham. Harding also encouraged Bingham to copy with paint engravings. He later painted two portraits of Boone but, contrary to the assertions of some scholars, he did not do Boone portraits in the company of Harding. Bingham's portraits of Boone are not located, but one of them, a wood signboard for a hotel in Boonville circa 1828 to 1830, showed a likeness of Boone in buckskin dress...
Category

1840s Hudson River School Art

Materials

Engraving

"A Cloudy Day, " View of Montclair, New Jersey, Tonalist, Barbizon Scene
Located in New York, NY
George Inness (1825 - 1894) A Cloudy Day, 1886 Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches Signed and dated lower center Provenance: The artist Estate of the above Fifth Avenue Galleries, New York, Executor's Sale of Paintings by the Late George Inness, N.A., February 12 - 14, 1895, Lot 132 Joseph H. Spafford, acquired from the above Mrs. Spafford, by bequest from the above Leroy Ireland, New York, 1951 Ernest Closuit, Fort Worth, Texas Meredith Long & Company, Houston, Texas, circa 1960 Private Collection Shannon's Fine Art, American and European Fine Art Auction, October 27, 2016, Lot 42 Exhibited: New York, American Fine Arts Society, Exhibition of the Paintings Left by the Late George Inness, December 27, 1894, no. 90.  Literature: LeRoy Ireland, The Works of George Inness: An Illustrated Catalogue Raisonne, Austin, Texas, 1965, p. 336, no. 1324, illustrated. Michael Quick, "George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonne," Vol. II, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2007, pp. 282-83, 311, no. 966, illustrated.  George Inness, one of America's foremost landscape painters of the late nineteenth century, was born in 1825 near Newburgh, New York. He spent most of his childhood in Newark, New Jersey. He was apprenticed to an engraving firm until 1843, when he studied art in New York with Regis Gignoux, a landscape painter from whom he learned the classical styles and techniques of the Old Masters. In 1851, sponsored by a patron, Inness made a fifteen-month trip to Italy. In 1853 he traveled to France, where he discovered Barbizon landscape painting, leading him to adopt a style that used looser, sketchier brushwork and more open compositions, emphasizing the expressive qualities of nature. After working in New York from 1854 to 1859, he moved to Medfield, Massachusetts, and four years later to New Jersey, where through a fellow painter he began to experiment with using glazes that would allow him to fill his compositions with subtle effects of light. Duncan Phillips remarked on Inness’s mellow light as a unifying force, saying, “…he was equipped to modernize the grand manner of Claude and to apply the methods of Barbizon to American subjects." At this time also, Inness developed an interest in the religious theories of Emanuel Swedenborg...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Art

Materials

Canvas, Paint, 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 Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Hudson River School art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Hudson River School art available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add art created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, orange, purple and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Ralph Albert Blakelock, Jane Bloodgood-Abrams, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and John Frederick Kensett. 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 art, so small editions measuring 2 inches across are also available. Prices for art 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 $400 and tops out at $875,000, while the average work sells for $13,267.

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