Why the Hudson River School Still Amazes

Thomas Cole, Sunset on the Arno, 1837, is at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley until January 23. The exhibition, organized by the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, is from a private collection. Whispy clouds hover above, almost like angels.

Forty paintings from the Hudson River School of painting glow in the Shenandoah Valley, in the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester, VA. Certainly this location has some resemblance to the Hudson River Valley and these paintings would naturally resonate in the community. Just as the 19th century artists centered mainly in New York and New England hoped to capture and hold onto the natural beauty of their unspoiled nature, the Shenandoah Valley still offers a resting place from too much human development. Entitled "Different Views of Hudson River Painting," the paintings will be in Winchester until January 23.

Jasper Francis Cropsey, The Narrows of Lake George, in the Hudson River Museum. A smaller, view of Lake

George with similar colors is on view is in the in the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley

In this two-room exhibition, many pristine paintings are arranged amongst poetry and quotations by Walt Whitman, William Cullen Bryant and others. The four seasons and many sunsets are on view. These paintings capture views we occasionally see in the mountains or countryside in those moments of nature's most beautiful light and color. I was particularly drawn to Jasper Francis Cropsey's radiant, reflecting color in Lake George, reminding me of the beautiful autumn that has just passed. Much if its appeal is that this painting and several others allow us to remember something and then hold onto it.

John William Casilear, Quiet River (Genesee), 1874. Often there are usually more cattle than people in the Hudson River paintings.

The majority of paintings are small and intimate; brushstrokes are minute and very detailed. People and animals, if depicted, are extremely small to show the grandeur of the natural world. The air is clean, often hazy, and the water is totally placid. We are invited into contemplation.

There are majestic views of Niagara Falls and Mount Washington, but also simple scenes of unknown places such as John William Casilear's Quiet River (Genesee),1874. There is nothing intellectual about the exhibition, only the opportunity for reverie in peaceful, pastoral places. Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson School and painter of the Journey of Life series in Washington's National Gallery, often painted his landscapes as allegories, but there doesn't seem to be an underlying message in this Italian scene, Sunset on the Arno--unless the clouds are seen as angels.

Laura Woodward, Adirondeck Woodland with Deer, has an infinite variety of greens, from very light to dark. The two deer are barely shown against the daylight around the bend of a stream and under the tall trees on the right.


The entire exhibition helps us understand why the Hudson River School is still admired. Alexis Rockman, a contemporary New York painter featured in this blog's next entry was influenced by the Hudson River School.This distinctive American style of painting was important from the 1830s to 1880s. Impressionism in France had a much bigger influence on modernism and is usually more popular, but these artists--and there are so many of them-- deserve a long look and a lot of our respect.
At home I have a small painting on a plate, done in the Hudson River style by my great-grandmother. A gift to my great-grandfather, it is signed on the reverse, "From Helen to James, painted between Xmas and New Year's 1889.

George Inness, Moonlight, Tarpons Springs, 1892, is in the Phillips Collection and part of the current exhibition, Side by Side, which offers comparison to paintings in Oberlin College's Allen Art Museum. Along with Ralph Blakelock's Moonlight and three other moonlight paintings, it can be seen until January 16
Washington museums also have several paintings of the Tonalists who came after the Hudson River School and were generally more painterly. These artists used more layers and show greater influence from the techniques of French painters, particularly from the Barbizon School. The Tonalist painters of moonlight scenes, offer a nice comparison with the sunsets of Hudson River painters---less color but perhaps even more evocative of moods. These paintings include several by Ralph Albert Blakelock at the National Gallery, Phillips, Corcoran and Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as paintings by George Inness.
Here is a blog devoted to the Hudson River School: http://circa1855.blogspot.com/

Surrealism Today

William Scarlato, "Icarus Falls, Daedalus Rises," currently in Kindlon Hall, Benedictine University, Lisle, IL

“Surrealism has always been a part of art, long before the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, because people have always been dreaming and artists have always let out the darker sides of their imagination,” states David Fox, one of the artists who is on view in the exhibition, “Figuration Today: The Surrealist Influence.” While this particular exhibition at the McLean Project for the Arts concentrates on figural imagery, Alexis Rockman who is featured in the retrospective, “A Fable for Tomorrow,” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum does not; he paints the land, sea, animal and plant world of an imagined future. People are curiously lacking in his cosmic landscapes. On the other hand, William Scarlato paints a playful musing with both humans and the landscape, suggesting we are intimately intertwined.

Detail, of David Fox, “The Opportunists,” on view at McLean Project for the Arts’ exhibition on Surrealism Today, McLean, VA.

Each artist begins his explorations with a different viewpoint, although each one is deeply indebted to traditions of the past. David Fox explores the human condition, transgression, payback and transformation. He has done two series of sketches based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. “The Opportunists,” a drawing created from etching ink has both strong lines and flowing drips of ink. He presents a hideous, interconnected group of opportunists who are in hell because they failed to make commitments, following whatever was convenient and strategic at the time. Now, in perpetuity, they are punished by swarms of hornets, groveling to escape but cannot – a horrible fate, but not the worst for those who end up in hell.

Alexis Rockman paintings suggest awe and the wonder of an earth that has the potential to become a living hell. As a child, Rockman was deeply steeped in natural history. His first large scale mural, “Evolution,” records real and imagined beings, beginning with the dinosaurs and ending with a tiny hermaphrodite, the only anthropomorphic image in his 47 paintings on view at the Smithsonian. His paintings evoke a deep concern for the environment and its changes.

Rockman has traveled far and wide to paint and explore the environment, to diverse places such as Antarctica and the rain forests of Guyana. He synthesizes fact and fantasy, just as his painting style of oil and acrylics fuses precise and hard-edged forms with luminous, flowing settings. The colors stand out like jewels in this technique. He claims to have been influenced by
the Hudson River School, but it is clear that the imaginative imagery of Heironymous Bosch also inspired him.

detail of Evolution, by Alexis Rockman. His large murals feature fantastic imagery that is better than any computerized, 3-dimensional film. No need to go to the movie theatre!

William Scarlato derives inspiration from 16^th century artist Pieter Bruegel, who worked in the tradition of Bosch. Just as David Fox used the stories of Dante, Scarlato used Ovid’s age-old tale of the Fall of Icarus, a classic story of human pride and arrogance. The great inventor Daedalus had made wax wings for Icarus to fly, but when Icarus got too close to the sun, his wings melted and he drowned. Scarlato picked up most of the details of Bruegel’s original painting: the farm fields, a plowman who ignores what’s going on, a shepherd with his flock looking up to the sky, the sea with boats and the tiny legs of the fallen Icarus.

The neat farm fields of this painting can be compared with the soybean fields in Rockman’s painting, "The Farm." Rockman chose soybeans because they are the most genetically mutated agricultural product. In his field, the familiar farm animals, pigs, cows and roosters, have also mutated because of hormones and genetic engineering. There is much cause for concern and we are left with thoughts of doom, as changes in the world have come too fast.

The Farm is one of 47 paintings by Alexis Rockman at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

However, Scarlato’s landscape, “Icarus Falls, Daedalus Rises,” is more optimistic. He also uses a deep, deep space evocative of dreams and memory. In this painting, the a large, Cubist-style collage shape hovers above the land, sea and the fallen Icarus. Although this dangling, toy-like figure looks quite mechanical, it presents the viewer with a puzzle. Inside of it is an angel, flying on an angle upward. As humans, we can rise or fall; in this case, notice it is Daedalus, the artist/inventor/creator who rises. The ship and water below remind us that all of life is a journey. Can David Fox’s “opportunists” be transformed and can Alexis Rockman’s farm animals be saved?