Paintings of the Hudson River School
In celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's first voyage up the Hudson River, the New York Historical Society has an exhibition of Hudson River School paintings running through March. In case you can't make it to the museum in person, they've also just published a book, The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision, featuring works from their incredible collection. In the first half of the 19th century, a group of painters working in New York City developed a distinctly American vision of the landscape. Their powerful interpretations of American scenery, which came to be known as the Hudson River School, "tell the story of how landscape imagery can shape both national and cultural identity." The book showcases more than a hundred of these images, many in full-page reproductions that convey the original paintings' monumental scale, and features work by all the greatest artists of the group including Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Jasper Cropsey and Asher B. Durand.
