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Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL STYLE

Considered the first major American painting movement, the Hudson River School emerged in the first half of the 19th century with landscape paintings that celebrated the young country’s natural beauty. Most of its leading painters were based in New York City where they exchanged ideas and traveled to the nearby Hudson River Valley and Catskills Mountains to re-create their vistas. At a time when the city was increasingly dense, the Hudson River School artists extolled the vast and pristine qualities of the American landscape, a sentiment that would inform the conservation movement.

American art was dominated by portraiture and historical scenes before Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School, began painting the Catskill Mountains in 1825. While the Hudson River School was informed by European art aesthetics, particularly the British focus on the sublime in nature, it was a style imbued with nationalism. The landscape painters who followed and studied under Cole would expand their focus from the Northeastern United States to places across the country, their work shared through prints and portfolios promoting an appreciation for the American wilderness — Niagara Falls, the mountain ranges that dot the American West and more — as the style blossomed during the mid-19th century.

Cole’s student Frederic Edwin Church as well as painters such as Albert Bierstadt, John Frederick Kensett, Asher Brown Durand and others became prominent proponents of the Hudson River School. The American art movement also had close ties to the literary world, including to authors like William Cullen Bryant, Henry David Thoreau and James Fenimore Cooper who wrote on similar themes. Although by the early 1900s the style had waned, and modernism would soon guide the following decades of art in the United States, the Hudson River School received renewed interest in the late 20th century for the dramatic way its artists portrayed the world.

Find a collection of authentic Hudson River School paintings, drawings and watercolors and more art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Hudson River School
Waterfalls of Hot Springs, VA
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This richly detailed Hudson River School painting by William Guy Wall presents a striking view of a waterfall near Hot Springs, Virginia. Painted with warm, earthy tones and a glowin...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Pastoral Landscape titled "Cows Resting"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
James McDougal Hart (1828-1901) was a prominent American landscape painter and a key figure in the Hudson River School. His landscapes are characterized by their serene and idyllic q...
Category

Late 18th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Summer Gathering
By Ambrose Andrews
Located in Saratoga Springs, NY
Signed lower right. An itinerant portrait, miniature, and landscape painter, Ambrose Andrews had a wide-ranging career geographically that saw him in many regions including New York (1829-31), Connecticut (1837), Texas (1837-1841) and Louisiana (1841-42). After 1844, he was active in St. Louis, New York City, Buffalo, New York, Vermont and Canada. He was born in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 1824, attended the National Academy of Design. Andrews exhibited paintings at the Republic of Texas Capitol...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Rocky Seashore
By Lemuel D. Eldred
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
"Rocky Seascape" by Lemuel D. Eldred is a captivating painting that masterfully captures the raw beauty and power of the sea. Eldred, an accomplished 19th-century American marine art...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Oil landscape of Autumn Forest
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This Hudson River School autumn landscape is done by the famed artist David Johnson. He studied at the national Academy of Design in New York. He was best known for the development o...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Summer Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower right: JR Brevoort
Category

1860s Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Cathedral Spires, South Dakota
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
"Cathedral Spires, South Dakota," attributed to the accomplished painter Grafton Tyler Brown, is a stunning representation of the American landscape, i...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Landscape of Children Playing Baseball titled "Baseball Beneath the Hills"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This charming Hudson River School study by Virginia Granbery captures a tender and distinctly American moment: children playing baseball in a sunlit clearing. Painted by one of the f...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Walking Along a Rocky Shore
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
With masterful precision and a keen eye for atmosphere, Frederic Rondel captures the rugged beauty of the coastline in Walking Along a Rocky Shore. The painting depicts a windswept s...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Garden in Montone, France
By George Hobbs
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
George Hobbs’ A Garden in Montone, France invites viewers into a serene moment of everyday beauty nestled in the heart of the French countryside. The composition features a narrow la...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Little Girl Reading by House
By Edward Lamson Henry
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
"Reading After School," attributed to Edward Lamson Henry, offers a glimpse into the everyday moments of 19th-century American life. Known for his meticulous detail and his ability t...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Summer Hills, Hunter Mountain
By Jervis McEntee
Located in New York, NY
Dated lower right: Sept. 67
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil

A Friend of a Friend (oil painting of young boys in landscape)
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Richard Law Hinsdale (1832–1874) was an American painter known for his contributions to landscape and genre painting during the mid-19th century, mostly in the Hudson River School. He received brief instruction from Alexander Emmons, Philip Hewins and Jared B Flagg as well as being exhibited in American art...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

View of South Pond, New York, 1879 by Ida H. Stebbins (American, b. 1851)
Located in New York, NY
Painted by Hudson River School artist Ida H. Stebbins (b. 1851), "View of South Pond, New York," 1879 is oil on canvas, measures 23 x 33 1/2 inches, and is signed and dated 1879 at the lower left. The work is framed in an elegant Barbizon style frame and ready to hang. Ida H. Stebbins was born in January 1851 in Chelsea, Massachusetts to Mary and Isaac Stebbins, a teacher. Though scant records remain of Stebbins’ artistic training or career, various personal details of her life have been gleaned from contemporary newspapers and federal documents. By the time View of South Pond, New York was painted in 1879, she was living in Boston. Like many artists of her generation, Stebbins likely traveled throughout the Northeast region, gaining inspiration for her paintings from the landscape of New England and New York. Stebbins was likely visiting upstate New York when she painted this sweeping view of South Pond and the surrounding mountains near Long Lake in the Adirondacks just south of Deerland. Here, Stebbins captures the stunning vermillion, burnt orange and brown tones of the autumn landscape with the style and precise rendering often seen in paintings produced by the Hudson River School. Shortly after the completion of View of South Pond, New York, Stebbins married Frank H. Slack, a clerk, in her hometown of Chelsea on December 14, 1881 at the age of thirty. The couple moved to Hotel Comfort in Boston, where their son, Roland Stewart Slack was born on May 22, 1883. It seems likely that her husband died in the mid-1880s since on December 3, 1889, records indicate that Ida and Roland changed their last name back to her maiden name of Stebbins. Roland Stewart Stebbins (1883-1974) inherited his mother’s interest in art, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Columbia University in New York, and the Art Students League of New York. He also studied at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière and the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Today, he is remembered for his marine and genre paintings and for his legacy as a respected professor of art education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On January 1, 1890, Ida married her second husband, Timothy Jarvis, in Somerville, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Ida Hazel Jarvis, was born soon after in 1893. However, the child suffered paralysis from a brain tumor...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Homeward Bound
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower right: W Whittredge
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil

Oil on Wood Landscape of Fort Nathan Hale, Black Rock Fort, CT
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This Oil on Wood American Landscape painting is done by John Mackie Falconer (1820-1903) and is signed center left. The scene is of New Haven Connecticut l...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Wood, Oil

Niagara Falls
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower left: R. Gignoux
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil

Fairhaven Harbor (Old Tack Works Wharf)
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower right: Bradford
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Paper, Oil, Board

"A Cloudy Day, " View of Montclair, New Jersey, Tonalist, Barbizon Scene
Located in New York, NY
George Inness (1825 - 1894) A Cloudy Day, 1886 Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches Signed and dated lower center Provenance: The artist Estate of the above Fifth Avenue Galleries, New York, Executor's Sale of Paintings by the Late George Inness, N.A., February 12 - 14, 1895, Lot 132 Joseph H. Spafford, acquired from the above Mrs. Spafford, by bequest from the above Leroy Ireland, New York, 1951 Ernest Closuit, Fort Worth, Texas Meredith Long & Company, Houston, Texas, circa 1960 Private Collection Shannon's Fine Art, American and European Fine Art Auction, October 27, 2016, Lot 42 Exhibited: New York, American Fine Arts Society, Exhibition of the Paintings Left by the Late George Inness, December 27, 1894, no. 90.  Literature: LeRoy Ireland, The Works of George Inness: An Illustrated Catalogue Raisonne, Austin, Texas, 1965, p. 336, no. 1324, illustrated. Michael Quick, "George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonne," Vol. II, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2007, pp. 282-83, 311, no. 966, illustrated.  George Inness, one of America's foremost landscape painters of the late nineteenth century, was born in 1825 near Newburgh, New York. He spent most of his childhood in Newark, New Jersey. He was apprenticed to an engraving firm until 1843, when he studied art in New York with Regis Gignoux, a landscape painter from whom he learned the classical styles and techniques of the Old Masters. In 1851, sponsored by a patron, Inness made a fifteen-month trip to Italy. In 1853 he traveled to France, where he discovered Barbizon landscape painting, leading him to adopt a style that used looser, sketchier brushwork and more open compositions, emphasizing the expressive qualities of nature. After working in New York from 1854 to 1859, he moved to Medfield, Massachusetts, and four years later to New Jersey, where through a fellow painter he began to experiment with using glazes that would allow him to fill his compositions with subtle effects of light. Duncan Phillips remarked on Inness’s mellow light as a unifying force, saying, “…he was equipped to modernize the grand manner of Claude and to apply the methods of Barbizon to American subjects." At this time also, Inness developed an interest in the religious theories of Emanuel Swedenborg...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Oil

Hudson River School landscape paintings for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Hudson River School landscape paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add landscape paintings created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, orange, purple and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Ralph Albert Blakelock, Jane Bloodgood-Abrams, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and John Frederick Kensett. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Oil Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Hudson River School landscape paintings, so small editions measuring 4.75 inches across are also available. Prices for landscape paintings made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $400 and tops out at $875,000, while the average work sells for $15,000.