New York’s biggest river has long been romanticized, perhaps most strikingly by the Hudson River School, a movement of New York City-based landscape painters who promoted growing nationalism, and eventually Manifest Destiny, by depicting America’s untamed nature as utopic. The towns and cities along its idyllic banks serve now as weekend getaways for busy New Yorkers, but in the mid-19th century, artists such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church idealized its naturalism. A sale at Shannon’s auction house in Connecticut set to start on starting April 27 features work by many lesser-known Hudson River School artists, putting the past lives of the Hudson River on full display.
The works depict New York State’s pastoral history, sometimes offering reminders of how much has changed, but often showing how much has stayed the same.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
Landscaper painter Henry Boese centered imagery from New York State throughout the second half of the 1800s. He rendered a hilly landscape around the Hudson in a painting he titled, “Stroll Along The River” (1853). The scene appears fantastical, but it’s dotted with 19th-century relics — sailboats, a man and woman in old-timey clothing, and a farmhouse.
The rolling hills have been cultivated for farmland: By the 1880s, less than a quarter of New York had been forested. (Now, around 63% of the state is covered with trees.) Boese, however, does not portray farm workers, crops, or animals. Instead, he renders two people apparently taking a stroll. The choice alludes to a larger theme of the Hudson River School, which became popular alongside America’s growing tourism industry. The painting is not from the perspective of the people who live and work in the riverside locale, but rather from the wistful view of a vacationer.
An impressionist painting by little-known artist Bayard Taylor depicts a less curated scene. The artist portrays the Palisades, the sharp cliffs that drop the New Jersey shore into the Hudson River. It appears similar to a photograph captured around 1910, but another photo captured a hundred years later reveals a nearly identical scene.
Other works offer more overtly romantic portrayals of the Hudson. In an 1867 work titled “Storm King,” Scottish-born artist James Fairman renders the titular mountain in Cornwall, New York (it’s only a 10-minute drive from the more famous Storm King Art Center). It’s impossible to decipher the details of Fairman’s landscape, but a recent photograph of the 1,300-foot Storm King mountain shows a scene nearly untouched by development.
One of the auctioned works presents the most jarring commentary on the rapid expansion of American cities and the sacrifice of design and pedestrian utility. Richard Hayley Lever’s circa-1913 painting of the High Bridge in the Bronx shows a scene that appears to be taken straight from a Robert Frost poem, rather than New York City. Snow covers the river slopes and small painted buildings line the waterfront. In the background, a cluster of developments rests on a short hill.
A contemporary photo of this exact location reveals a river expansion project that doubled the bridge’s length, foregrounded by a billboard and a tangle of highways. The shoreline now looks impossible to access on foot.
However, just a dozen or so miles outside of the city, modern photographs reveal scenes that still emulate the romanticized 19th- and 20th-century paintings. The shoreline is nearly untouched, save the rail tracks that run along the Hudson from New York City to Albany, creating one of the most stunning train rides in the country.
Source: Hyperallergic.com