The discussion at Art Center Information centers on light as used by the Hudson River School artists, often termed the Luminists.
Many of the colleagues at the Hudson River School began painting scenes of New England and the Hudson River Valley, but expanded their portrayals across the American continent. Wherever they painted their landscapes, they painted with a luminous effect that created excitement, characterized by their realistic, detailed and idealized portrayal of nature.
The artist Thomas Cole receives acknowledgement as founder of the school. He believed nature in the American landscape was a manifestation of God. He shared a reverence for America’s beauty with writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Many of the artists from the school would travel to extraordinary and extreme, dangerous environs that was not conducive for making a painting. The painting would be produced later from memories and sketches.
In 1863, student of the Hudson River School, Albert Bierstadt, ventured west passing through Yosemite. He spent two months taking notes and making sketches before leaving for the west coast. Many of the oil sketches he made took him as much as eight hours to create. His dedication to accurately record the mise-en-scene of a landscape was considered to have no equal in America.
Although Bierstadt had many great fans, he also had ardent detractors objecting to his innacurate color schemes, altering geographic elements to enhance viewers emotions , his excessive use of light, and pandering to the popular love of excitement. However, Bierstadt had traveled to these places and seen the dreamlike, wondrous landscapes with his own eyes, and his critics had not.
For your art information, “School”, in this sense refers to a group of painters whose outlook, style and inspiration demonstrate a common thread rather than a learning institution.
Others notably belonging to the school:
John William Casilear; Frederic Edwin Church; Samuel Colman; Jasper Cropsey; Thomas Doughty; Asher Brown Durand;Robert Duncanson; Sanford Robinson gifford; James McDougal Hart;
William Hart; William Stanly Haseltine; Martin Johnson Heade; Hermann Ottmar Herzog; Thomas Hill; David Johnson; John Frederick Kensett; jervis McEntee; Thomas Moran; Robert Walter Weir; Worthington Whittredge
