Collection

Hudson River School paintings, framed

The Hudson River School was America's first school of landscape painting, from the 1820s to the 1870s. Thomas Cole began it with views of the Catskills and the Hudson Valley; Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Sanford Robinson Gifford, John Frederick Kensett and Jasper Cropsey followed, and Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran carried it west to the Rockies and Yosemite.

The paintings share a slow, careful look at real places, the Catskills, the Adirondacks, the White Mountains and Niagara, usually under dramatic light. The calmer coastal pictures of Fitz Henry Lane, Martin Johnson Heade and Alfred Bricher, often called Luminism, are here too.

Most of these are wide. Over a sofa, one Large print or a pair at Medium usually fills the wall better than several small ones.

151 works in this collection, dated 1828 to 1911. Most represented: Albert Bierstadt (44), Thomas Cole (20), and Frederic Edwin Church (15). Sources include Cleveland Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.