Hudson River School

Hudson River School, the first group of landscape painters to emerge in the United States after independence from Great Britain. The Hudson River School flourished between 1820 and 1880. Many of the artists associated with the group lived and painted in the Catskill Mountains region of New York State, particularly along the Hudson River. Early members of the school include Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Thomas Doughty. Their work is characterized by meticulous and realistic attention to detail and a poetic feeling for nature characteristic of romanticism.

Other artists who painted in the West, in Mexico, South America, or in the Mediterranean countries are considered to be members of the school because their landscapes display the same romantic love of nature, formal composition, and precise detail that are typical of the Hudson River School. The so-called Panoramists, who painted in the style of the school and attempted to express the scenic beauty of the Rocky and Sierra mountains as well as regions outside the United States, include Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran. The Hudson River School had an important influence on the work of such later landscape masters as George Inness and Alexander Wyant.