The Hudson River School

Look at the paintings on the next three slides.

Identify traits which they all have in common.

Artists and Writers

Landscape In The Adirondacks, Frederic Edwin Church

A Storm In The Rocky Mountains, Albert Bierstadt

Kindred Spirits 1849Asher Brown Durand

Thomas ColeThe Falls of the Kaatskill

mid-19th century American art movement embodied by landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism.

the first coherent school of American art - active from 1825 to 1870; painted wilderness landscapes of the Hudson River valley and surrounding New England

Hudson River School

 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.

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.

James J. Audubon Drew birds, mammals, plants and other objects from nature. Discovered and documented many new species in North America.

This period saw masterpieces like:Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter,

and The House of the Seven Gables. Herman Melville’s Moby DickHenry David Thoreau’s WaldenWalt Whitman, Leaves of GrassWashington Irving, Rip Van Winkle and The

Headless HorsemanEdgar Allan Poe, suspenseful short stories

like The RavenJames Fenimore Cooper, Last of the

Mohicans

American Literature

Wrote of the American West and peoples experiences and reactions with nature. Developed ideal of individuals with a natural inner goodness.

His most popular work, Last of the Mohicans, defined the stereotypical work of white frontiersman and Native Americans.

James Fenimore Cooper

Wrote Moby Dick,Themes include man versus man,

man versus nature and man versus society.

Revolves around the obsession of a sea captain with a giant whale

Considered one of the most important novels in American Literature.

Herman Mellville

American transcendentalist who was against slavery and stressed self-reliance, optimism, self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom. He was a prime example of a transcendentalist and helped further the movement.

Henry David ThoreauProtégé of Emerson United States writer and social critic (1817-

1862) Transcendentalist and wrote on civil disobedience

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was America's most beloved nineteenth century poet. He created myths and classic epics from American historical events and materials — Native American oral history ("The Song of Hiawatha"), and the first battle of the Revolutionary War ("Paul Revere's Ride"). He reminded Americans of their roots and in the process became an American icon himself.

Civil Disobedience: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," 1849

Henry David Thoreau wrote this essay where he expressed opposition to the Mexican War. He argued that individuals have a moral responsibility to oppose unjust laws & unjust actions by gov'ts. This essay influenced Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolent resistance.

Civil Disobedience

Walt WhitmanAdditional Writers

Leaves of GrassCelebrated democracy, the liberation of individual spirit

Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter About the price individuals pay for cutting themselves off from society. Set in Puritan New England