The Hudson River School was an American art movement from the mid-19th century comprised of landscape painters like Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, and Martin Johnson Heade. While not a formal institution, these romantic painters were influenced by each other and painted detailed landscapes of the Hudson River Valley and other natural areas, celebrating an idealized American wilderness. Martin Johnson Heade in particular became known for his portraits of hummingbirds in addition to landscapes of the Maine coast, Florida marshes, and American West.

1. THE HUDSON
RIVER SCHOOL
Cari C.~Alyssa W.~Alex L.

2. CLEARING UP
MISCONCEPTIONS…
• The Hudson River school is not, in fact, a school or institution
(Unnecessary misnomer, we know.)
• It is, in fact, artistically acceptable to keep a stash of dead hummingbirds
in your basement. (see slides on Martin Heade)
• All landscape artists have cool names.

3. SO WHAT WAS THE HUDSON RIVER
SCHOOL?
“The Hudson River School was a mid-
19th century American art movement
embodied by a group of landscape
painters whose aesthetic vision was
influenced by romanticism.”
(In other words, an informal group of creepy, but like-minded and
awesomely-named painters.)

4. Landscape In The Adirondacks, Frederic Edwin Church A Storm In The Rocky Mountains, Albert Bierstadt
The Hudson River School style involved carefully detailed paintings with
romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism.
The paintings for which the movement is named depict the Hudson River
Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and
the White Mountains; eventually works by the second generation of artists
associated with the school expanded to include other locales.

5. SO, WHY IS THE HUDSON
RIVER SCHOOL
IMPORTANT?
 Hudson River School paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century:
discovery, exploration, and settlement.
 The HRS combines elements of Romanticism and Nationalism. The first Europeans who
came to the New World tended to view nature either as an evil, forbidding wasteland or as a
storehouse of economically valuable resources. In either case, wilderness was something to
be quickly civilized, brought under human control in the name of progress…
The HRS paintings depict the American landscape as a pastoral setting,
where human beings and nature coexist peacefully . In general, Hudson River School artists
believed that the American landscape was an ineffable manifestation of God, though the
artists varied in the depth of their religious conviction. In short: The Romantics that made up
the HRS provided an alternative framework through which to see and appreciate the natural world.
 Hudson River School artists tended to celebrate American wilderness, and they were important in
helping Americans to come to see the aesthetic and spiritual value in landscapes that were relatively
untouched by human hands.

6. SOME ARTISTS OF THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL
Thomas Cole, (Founder)
Frederic Edwin Church
Asher B. Durand
Albert Bierstadt
Martin Johnson Heade
John William Casilear
Thomas Moran
And now, some examples of these artists…

7. THOMAS COLE
February 1, 1801-
February 11, 1848

8. THOMAS COLE
Thomas Cole is recognized as the
founder of the Hudson River School.
Cole’s landscape paintings
emphasized the untouched
wilderness of America and his art
quickly became popular. He inspired
and became the leader of a group of
like-minded artists including Asher
Durand, Sanford Gifford, and Jasper
Cropsey. Together they created the
first truly “American” art style.

9. WORKS BY THOMAS COLE

10. ALBERT BIERSTADT
January 7, 1830 - February 18, 1902

11. BIOGRAPHY
•Born in Solingen, Germany.
• He was only about two years old when his family
moved from Germany to New Bedford in
Massachusetts.
•In 1853 he returned to Germany to study in
Dusseldorf, where he refined his technical abilities by
painting Alpine landscapes.
•Bierstadt returned to America in 1857, and joined an
overland survey expedition which allowed him to
travel westward across the country.

12. Oregon Trail Wind River Country 1
Bierstadt was best known for his large landscapes of the American
West, and was the foremost painter of these scenes for the remainder of the
19th century.

13. HIS LEGACY
Because of Bierstadt's interest in mountain
landscapes, Mount Bierstadt in Colorado is In 1998, the United States Postal Service issued a
named in his honor. Another Colorado mountain set of 20 commemorative stamps entitled "Four
was originally named Mount Rosa, after Centuries of American Art", one of which featured
Bierstadt's wife, but it was later renamed Mount Albert Bierstadt's The Last of the Buffalo.
Evans after Colorado governor John Evans.

14. MORE WORK BY BIERSTADT

16. MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE
August 11, 1819 –
September 4, 1904

17. EARLY LIFE
Heade was born and raised in a small house in
Lumberville, Pennsylvania, along the Delaware River.
Until the 1850s, his family owned Hicks, as painted by his
cousin, Thomas
and ran the town’s only general
store, the Lumberville Store & Post
Office.
He received his first art training
through an artist by the name of
Edward Hicks, who lived in the
area at the time.
Heade, photographed in
his late 30’s (1840s)

18. HUMMINGBIRDS. EVERYWHERE.
During his later years, around
1860, Heade took a year-long
trip to Brazil (his first of
three), where he developed an
obsession with South
American Hummingbirds.
Suddenly, everything he
painted was hummingbirds…

19. FLOWERS AND
HUMMINGBIRDS!

20. NESTS AND HUMMINGBIRDS!

21. FIGHTING HUMMINGBIRDS!

22. WE WARNED YOU ABOUT THE HUMMINGBIRDS.
While Heade was certainly well-known for his hummingbird portraiture (those
details were from 23 of over 40 hummingbird paintings), he was more highly
regarded for his work with landscapes.
Heade painted a variety of works using the American wilderness as a subject.
His landscapes include the coasts of Maine, the marshes of Florida, and the
flat plains of the West.
Some examples follow (no more hummingbirds, we promise)…

23. Evening Lake
Alto
(Florida)
York Harbor
(Coast of
Maine)

24. Sudden Shower
(Newberry
Marshes)
The Great
Sunset
(Florida)

25. WORKS CITED
"Albert Bierstadt - The complete works." Albert Bierstadt - The complete works. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 2 Nov. 2011. <http://www.albertbierstadt.org/>.
"Hudson River School - Paintings collection." Hudson River School - Paintings
collection. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Nov. 2011. <http://www.hudson-river-school.org/>.
"Hudson River School - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_School>.
"Hudson River School, Part 1." Department of History . N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.
<http://www.history.vt.edu/Barrow/Hist3144
"Martin Johnson Heade." Mark Harden's Artchive. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.
<http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/heade.html>.
"Martin Johnson Heade - The complete works." Martin Johnson Heade - The complete
works. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2011. <http://www.martin-johnson-heade.org/>.