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Hudson River School 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
19th Century Hudson River School Landscape after Richard Goodwin
Located in Soquel, CA
Charming Hudson River school antique oil painting of a sailboat on a lake, circa 1880-90. Signed "R. Labarr." after Richard LaBarre Goodwin...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Antique American Hudson River School Coastal Beach Landscape Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Impressive early American modernist abstract oil painting. Framed. Oil on canvas. Signed. Image size, 9.25H by 15L. Artist Bio: This following biography was researched, compiled...
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1870s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Historic and Rare 19th Century Arctic Iceberg Seascape Framed Winter Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American winter seascape with an iceberg by Carl Philipp Weber (1849 - 1922). Oil on canvas. Signed. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a period gold g...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Autumn Landscape
Located in Milford, NH
A wonderful Autumn landscape likely of the Hudson River Valley by the revered American artist William Louis Sonntag (1822-1900). Sonntag was born near Pittsburgh, PA and moved to Cincinnati, OH in the 1840’s to study art. He studied for a brief time with G. Frankenstein at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Art and his idealized paintings of American wilderness and visionary paintings of imagined European ruins were commercially successful. He traveled twice to Europe in the 1850’s to improve his skills, eventually settling in New York City. He joined the National Academy of Design, where he exhibited his works for forty years. His mature works identify him with the Hudson River School of landscape painters. A romantic and naturalistic painter of his surroundings, Sonntag also created idealized paintings of Roman ruins, recalling his European trips of earlier years. Sonntag was an Associate (1860) and Academician (1861) at the National Academy of Design, and a member of the American Watercolor Society, Artists Fund Society, and the American Art Union...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Ocean Landscape of Sailing off the Coast
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This coastal landscape is done by the famed painted William Frederick De Haas (1830-1880). This painting shows two men in a canoe paddling off the cliff shore in the foreground with ...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Large Panoramic YOSEMITE VALLEY Western California Encampment Landscape Figures
Located in New York, NY
Joseph John Englehart (1867-1915) was a prolific American landscape painter who painted in realist style. He was born on June 14, 1867 in Chicago, Illi...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

Hudson River School Style - The Homestead and Grist Mill 1942
By A. Mathieu
Located in Soquel, CA
Hudson River School Style - The Homestead and Grist Mill 1942 In the Hudson River School style by A (K) Mathieu (American, 19th-20th C). Harvest time at the Homestead with a hay wago...
Category

1940s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Illustration Board, Stretcher Bars

19th C New Jersey Surfmen Rescuing Foundering Ship - GW Nicholson
Located in Exton, PA
Fine late 19th C oil painting on cradled wood panel by George Washington Nicholson. The painting is in very good cleaned condition and shows Surfmen rescuing a ship in distress. This...
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1870s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

Landscape
By Asher Brown Durand
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This is a beautiful landscape done by the famous Hudson River School artist, Asher Brown Durand. Asher B. Durand began his art career following his father in engraving. He was one of...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Picnic in the Vineyard Spring Contemporary French Impressionist Style Landscape
By Alexandr Rapoport
Located in Soquel, CA
Spring Picnic in the Vineyard, Contemporary Impressionist Landscape Beautiful oil painting of a variety of fruits with cups in a field of grass by Alexander Rapoport (Russian-Ameri...
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21st Century and Contemporary Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Illustration Board

Hudson River School Original American Oil Painting Canoe Framed Trees 19th C
Located in Buffalo, NY
A tranquil and atmospheric landscape evocative of the Hudson River School, Boat Along the Hudson captures the poetic stillness of early American wilderness painting. A lone figure re...
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1890s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

“Worcester, Massachusetts”
Located in Southampton, NY
Oil on wood panel painting of a Worcester, Massachusetts view by local resident artist Mabel Blake. Signed M. Blake lower left. Circa 1880. Condition is good. The bucolic scene depicts a man in a boat...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Dawn at the River
Located in North Clarendon, VT
Wonderful Hudson River School painting, oil on canvas. Obviously painted by a talented artist, unsigned and a mystery for you to solve. Canvas stamped Edward Dechaux NY. An amazing...
Category

1850s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

Water Lilies
Located in Bryn Mawr, PA
Water Lilies, 1881 Oil on canvas, 7 1/2 x 12 inches (19.1 x 30.5 cm) Framed dimensions: 16 1/8 x 21 1/8 inches Signed and dated lower left: Geo. Henry Hall '81 George Henry Hall was...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Boating, Early Autumn
Located in New York, NY
19th Century Oil Painting on canvas, wooden support Signed JR Meeker (Lower Left) An early autumn landscape of the American South showing two boaters on a lake, painted in the H...
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19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

Mid Century Seascape -- Manresa Tidal Pool at Sunset
Located in Soquel, CA
Vibrant tidal pool seascape at sunset at Manresa Beach in Santa Cruz by Cecil F. Chamberlin (American, 1899 -1963), circa 1950. Translucent wave and breaking wave add interest and de...
Category

1950s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Linen, Stretcher Bars

Children Feeding the Horse
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This captivating artwork, titled "Children Feeding the Horse", is masterfully executed in rich tones. It depicts two children tenderly feeding a gentle white horse against a familiar...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Panel

Peaches in Cut Glass Dish
Located in New York, NY
Pristine and purely American in its aesthetic due to the fact that the artist concentrates on one type of fruit. Europeans were much more opulent in their approach to still lifes an...
Category

1870s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Antique American Hudson River School Panoramic Vista View Oil On Paper Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American Hudson River School panoramic landscape oil painting. Oil on paper. Framed. Apparently unsigned. Image size, 13L x 8.5H.
Category

1870s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Greek Ruins"
Located in Lambertville, NJ
Signed Lower Right Known for his marine, history, and portrait paintings, Franklin Briscoe was born in Baltimore, Maryland and at age four moved with his family to Philadelphia where he later became a student of Edward Moran and where eventually he settled his studio. Briscoe made extended ocean voyages, including trips to Europe where he saw much painting in galleries, and from these adventures and observations developed his landmark paintings of the ocean and ships in all kinds of weather conditions. In 1885, he painted an historical mural that was in ten panels, a total of 230 feet long, and 13 feet tall--"The Battle of Gettysburg...
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19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

American 19th Century Coved Picture Frame. Original Gold Gilding
Located in Rochester, NY
Antique American gilt picture frame. Rabbet measures 12.5" x 10.5" Perfect for a 12" x 10" painting.
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Gold Leaf

New England Coastal Scene with Figures
Located in New York, NY
Monogramed and dated lower right: JF.K. / ‘64.
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Cows Grazing in Field
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This serene Hudson River School painting by George Wright captures a peaceful moment of pastoral life, where three cows rest and graze under a wide, luminous sky. The composition gen...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Mountain Horse Ride
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Mountain Horse Ride is a richly atmospheric painting that captures the quiet dignity of rural life. Though unsigned, the work demonstrates a refined handling of figure, animal, and l...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Birch Tree in Maine, " Hudson River School Antique Landscape, White Mountains
Located in New York, NY
Harrison Bird Brown (1831 - 1915) Birch Tree in Maine, New England, 19th Century Oil on canvas 25 x 13 1/8 inches Initialed lower left Provenance: Portland International Galleries, Maine Mr. and Mrs. Walter M. Jeffords, Jr., Saratoga Springs, New York and Lexington, Kentucky (President of Brooklyn Borough Gas Company) Private Collection, Chicago Exhibited: Portland Maine, Portland Museum of Art, 58 Maine Paintings 1820-1920: Selections from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter M. Jeffords, Jr., May 20 - June 20, 1976, cat. no. 11. The above catalogue listing this vertical landscape will be included with your purchase. "Mr. Brown has succeeded fully in accomplishing that which Mr. John Ruskin, in speaking of J. M. W. Turner's sea views, said no painter had yet accomplished; that is, the representation of the creamy foam which the storm lashes up from the waves along a rocky shore." Harrison Bird Brown was born in 1831 in Portland, Maine, and is best known for his White Mountain landscapes and marine paintings of Maine...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Oil Sunset titled "Virginia Sunset"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
William H. Langworthy (1836–1900) was an American painter known for his contributions to landscape and genre painting during the late 19th century. Little is known about Langworthy's...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Portrait of Grandmother and Grandson titled "Peeling Apples"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
John George Brown (1831–1913) was a prominent British-born American painter, renowned for his genre paintings that vividly depict the everyday life of chi...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sunset Along the Front Range, Colorado, 1900s Traditional Landscape Painting
Located in Denver, CO
This stunning, original signed landscape watercolor on paper painting by Charles Partridge Adams (1858-1942) captures the breathtaking beauty of a Colorado sunset along the Front Ran...
Category

Early 20th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

Antique American Hudson River School Colosseum Italian Oil Painting Landscape
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American Hudson River School artist working in Italy. Oil on canvas. Framed nicely. No signature found.
Category

1860s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Fruit Still Life
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Edward L. Custer (1837–1881) was an American painter known for his landscape paintings, genre scenes, and still lifes often imbued with a romantic and idyllic quality. Custer's paint...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Into the Night
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower left in arrowhead: RA Blakelock.
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Western Lake Landscape, " John Fery, Hudson River School View
By John Fery
Located in New York, NY
John Fery (1859 - 1934) Western Lake Landscape, circa 1920 Oil on canvas 21 x 23 1/4 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Private Collection, New York Born in Austria, John Fery earned a strong reputation for dramatic paintings of western mountain landscape in the United States. Glacier National Park in northwest Montana was a popular subject for him. He was raised in a prominent, wealthy family that lived on an estate about nineteen miles northeast of Salzburg. His mother was Hungarian, and his father was born in Bohemia. S ome sources have written that he studied art in Dusseldorf, Germany with Peter Jansen, and also in Munich, Venice and Karlsruhe. But his "name does not appear in the records of the major art schools in any of these places, nor is there any record of his name at either the Vienna or Budapest academies." (Merrill 26) It is possible, however, that he received private instruction, and because of the sophistication of his painting, sources think it unlikely that he was self taught. An early interest in wilderness scenery led him to painting American landscapes and hunting scenes. In the mid 1880s, he came to America and lived in the German community in Milwaukee, and then in 1886, brought his family to the United States. His wife, Mary Rose Kraemer (1862-1940), was born in Switzerland, and they had one child born near Munich and two others born in the United States. From 1886 to 1888, they lived in New York, and by 1890, Fery had made his first trip West. He visited Yellowstone Park in 1891, and indicated in his writings that he had been there even earlier. From 1892 to 1893, he led European nobility on hunting expeditions to the American Northwest, made possible by the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad...
Category

1920s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Ship Portrait, " William Edward Norton, Seascape Maritime Painting, New England
Located in New York, NY
William Edward Norton (1843 - 1916) Ship Portrait, 1876 Oil on canvas 10 x 16 inches Signed and dated lower left Born in Boston, William Norton became a noted marine painter, stirred by his youth when he sailed on family-owned ships. He studied at the Lowell Institute in Boston, and with George Inness, and then established a studio in Boston. In the early 1870s, he went to Paris and became a student with Chevreuse and A. Vollon, and then he settled in London where he exhibited throughout the last quarter of the 19th century. His reputation there was based on his scenes of the Thames River, and ocean and coastal views. In 1901, he and his wife returned to the United States and settled in New York City. He also painted at Monhegan Island, Maine, where a treacherous ledge on the southern side of the island is named "Norton's Ledge" for him. He was a member of the Boston Art Club with whom he exhibited from 1873 to 1909. He also exhibited with the Pennsylvania Academy, the Royal Academy in London, the Paris Salon, the 1893 Chicago Exposition...
Category

1870s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Fishing Scene by Hudson River School artist John Carleton Wiggins (1848-1932)
Located in New York, NY
Summer Fishing Scene by Hudson River School artist John Carleton Wiggins (1848-1932) is oil on canvas and measures 12 x 20 inches. The painting is signed by Wiggins at the lower left...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Moonlight Seascape
Located in New York, NY
Monogrammed lower left: ATBRICHER
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Campfire at Sunset, 1867
Located in New York, NY
In “Campfire at Sunset,” George Inness captures a stunning sunset with a smoldering campfire set on a lakeside.
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Southern Landscape Oil Painting Hudson River School
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Copyright 2023 Michael F. Meyer All rights Reserved. This painting, signed RSD on right side, has been verified by the late expert on Robert S. Duncanson, Joseph Ketner and comes with an authentication letter. This painting has exhibited and is published in Robert S. Duncanson and His Courageous Southern Travels. This painting is one of the many beautiful southern landscape scenes that Robert S. Duncanson painted in his courageous travels south. "Robert S. Duncanson born in 1819, was an African American Hudson River School artist who painted the south before the Civil War, until his death in 1872. Although widely famous during his lifetime, this forgotten artist’s courageous journey through the antebellum south has never before been exhibited or researched until now. His brilliance was in creating captivating landscape paintings that come alive to the viewer, by focusing on the minute details of nature and of the stories he wished to communicate. Robert Duncanson...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

New England Sunrise, 1910 by Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932)
Located in New York, NY
"New England Sunrise," 1910 by Hudson River School painter Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932) is oil on artists card-stock and measures 9.75 x 14 inches. The work is signed by DeForest and dated Sept. 17, 1910 at lower left. The work is framed in an elegant, period appropriate frame, and ready to hang. Lockwood de Forest was born in New York in 1850 to a prominent family. He grew up in Greenwich Village and on Long Island at the family summer estate in Cold Spring Harbor. As was customary for a cultivated family in the Gilded Age, the de Forests made frequent trips abroad. Excursions to the great museums, which were prominent on the de Forests agenda, deepened the young Lockwood's familiarity with European painting and sculpture. Though he had begun drawing and painting somewhat earlier, it was during a visit to Rome in 1868 that nineteen-year-old de Forest first began to study art seriously, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844–1905). More importantly, on the same trip, Lockwood met one of America’s most celebrated painters, (and his maternal great- uncle by marriage) Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who quickly became his mentor. DeForest accompanied Church on sketching trips around Italy and continued this practice when they both returned to America in 1869. Early on in his career, de Forest made a habit of recording the date and often the place of his oil sketches, as to create a visual diary of his travels. Lockwood’s profession as a landscape painter can be primarily attributed to Frederic E. Church and his belief in the young artist’s talent. De Forest often visited Church in the Hudson River community of Catskill where, in addition to sketching trips and afternoons of painting, he assisted with the architectural drawings and planning of Olana. In 1872, de Forest took a studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. During these formative years de Forest counted among his friend’s artists such as Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–80), George Henry Yewell (1830–1923), John Frederick Kensett (1816–72), Jervis McEntee (1828–91), and Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932). Over the next decade de Forest experienced success as a painter. He exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in 1872, and made two more painting trips abroad, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, traveling to the major continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa. His trip to the Middle East and the library at Church’s home, Olana, established his interest in design during his mid-twenties. From about 1878 to 1902, landscape painting was overshadowed by his activities and preoccupation with East Indian architecture and décor, a style that became quite fashionable in late nineteenth century America. From 1879-1883, de Forest founded Associated Artists along with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler...
Category

Early 20th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

River Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower right: L.W.Prentice.
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Panel

Hudson River School Watercolor Titled Fishing the Creek
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
David Johnson was born in 1827 in New York City. Beginning in 1845, he studied for two years in the antique school of the National Academy of Design. His classmates and colleagues in...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Lights of the Aurora
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower right: W Bradford
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Creek Meets River: Hudson River School Landscape Painting of Water and Mountains
Located in Hudson, NY
Modern Luminist, Hudson River School landscape painting on canvas of a creek and river meeting around a forest bend with mountains in the distance "Where Creek Meets River" by Jane Bloodgood-Abrams, painted in 2021 Horizontal landscape painting, 36 x 48 inches unframed with white painted sides wired on reverse for easy hanging Artist's signature is located on lower left This modern Hudson...
Category

2010s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Panel

Landscape Silhouette at Twilight
Located in New York, NY
Signed illegibly lower right
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

Twilight on the Sawmill River
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated lower right: J.F. Cropsey 1887
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Landscape of Pond and Field After Rain Titled "Cranes After the Rain"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This serene landscape by a Hudson River School artist captures the quiet tension between storm and calm, rendered with luminous color and delicate brushwork. A soft sunset glows behi...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

"Building the Allegheny Railroad, Pennsylvania" Alfred Wall, Scalp Level School
Located in New York, NY
Alfred S. Wall (American, 1825-1896) Untitled (Building the Railroad), 1859 Oil on canvas 14 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches Signed and dated lower left For Christmas, 2008, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured Alfred Wall's painting, Old Saw Mill from the collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA. It was painted in 1851 in the town of Lilly, Pennsylvania in the Allegheny Mountains. The newspaper description stated that "though the saw mill is long gone, it still conveys all the warmth and coziness of this time of year. The article, written by Patricia Lowry, continued: At first glance, Alfred S. Wall's painting of a saw mill in snowy woods triggers nostalgia for the coziness of a log cabin, the smell of a wood-burning fire and the warming of chilled hands and feet beside it. But as sentimental as it seems on the surface, Mr. Wall's painting has a deeper and unexpected context. This is more than a painting about sled-riding children and early industry planted in the middle of virgin forest. Intended or not, this is a painting about conquering the great divide of the Allegheny Mountains. For the third consecutive year, the Post-Gazette features a winter-scene painting on the cover of the Christmas Day newspaper. This year's painting, Old Saw Mill, was selected by co-publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block and executive editor David Shribman during a visit to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg. Mr. Wall, listed as a portrait painter in the 1850 census, was about 26 when he painted Old Saw Mill in 1851. The self-taught artist was born in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, to William and Lucy Wall, who'd emigrated from England around 1820. An artistic sensibility ran in the family: William was a sculptor who carved ornate tombstones here; Alfred's children, A. Bryan and Bessie, were landscape painters, as was Alfred's older brother, William Coventry Wall. For more than a century the Walls formed a prominent art dynasty in Pittsburgh, and Alfred, eventually a partner in the city's most prestigious art gallery, was well known as a painter, dealer and restorer. In Old Saw Mill, two wood cutters, each holding an axe, meet outside the mill; one points in the direction of the forest. On the other side of the stream, one child pulls another down the hillside on a sled. Just behind the hill's slope, the roof of a building appears, perhaps the home of the sawyer. The luminous, late afternoon light comes from the northwest, casting lengthening shadows on the snow under a darkening sky. The saw mill in "Old Saw Mill" likely would have been impossible to track down had Mr. Wall, presumably, not written on the back of the painting: "old saw mill near Jct. 4, Portage RR, Pa." "There was no Junction 4," said Mike Garcia, park ranger at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, about 90 miles east of Pittsburgh near Gallitzen, Cambria County. "But there was an Inclined Plane No. 4 at Lilly, and there was a saw mill there." In fact, there were at least six saw mills at Lilly over the years, said longtime resident Jim Salony, president of the Lilly-Washington Historical Society. But when he saw an image of the painting, Mr. Salony had no trouble coming up with a location. While there are no known photographs of the saw mill, he believes it stood near the intersection of Portage and Washington streets, next to Bear Rock Run. Mr. Salony, retired academic dean at Mount Aloysius College, didn't know exactly when the mill was torn down, but it's been gone since at least the late 1800s. He was pleased to learn of the painting, even though that knowledge came too late for inclusion in a new book about Lilly, The Spirit of a Community, for which he served as primary author and editor. It runs to more than 700 pages. For a little town -- population 869 last year -- Lilly has a lot of history. Nestled in a bowl on the western slope of the Allegheny Mountains about 3 miles south of Cresson, Lilly was first settled in 1806 by Joseph Meyer and his family, who named their 332-acre land patent Dundee. Although the Meyers had left by 1811, other settlers followed, but the community didn't flourish until the 1830s, when the Allegheny Portage Railroad began its 23-year-run through the town. For 200 years the Alleghenies had stood as an impediment to trade and travel between Pittsburgh and the east. A canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh would change that and compete with New York's Erie Canal. But a portage railroad would have to be built, on which teams of horses would lead the canal boats over the mountains. Engineer Sylvester Welch began his surveying from the small settlement at Lilly. The railroad would require 10 inclined planes, some quite steep, between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. To build it, trees had to be cut along a 120-foot-wide right-of-way for 36 miles, along which track and engine houses had to be built. William Brown, who owned the saw mill on Bear Rock Run, built at least one of the engine houses at Inclined Plane No. 4; an 1834 contract also included fencing the dwelling lots at the head and foot of the plane. Lilly is located at what was the foot of Inclined Plane No. 4., giving the community one of its early informal names, Foot of Four. Named in 1883 for Richard Lilly, who'd completed the grist mill there, Lilly had another early name: Hemlock, so dubbed by a Portage Railroad traveler who smelled the bark stripped from the trees at the saw mill. Because there isn't another Allegheny Portage Railroad location like it, where a cut in the mountains opens into a bowl, Mr. Salony thinks it was Lilly that Charles Dickens wrote about following his trip from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh on the Pennsylvania Canal in late March 1842, describing what he saw after emerging from "the bottom of the cut": "It was very pretty while traveling, to look down into a valley full of light and softness, catching glimpses through the tree-tops of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, who we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homeward; families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out to-morrow's work; and we riding onward, high above them, like a whirlwind." To get to Lilly, Mr. Wall may have taken the Pennsylvania Canal from his home in Allegheny City, now the North Side. He'd married young, at 21, to Sarah Carr in 1846, the same year he began his career as an artist. By 1880 they were living in a brick townhouse at 104 (later 814) Arch St., now demolished. Across the river in Pittsburgh he shared a studio at 67 Fourth Ave. with his brother William; they later moved to Burke's Building, today the city's oldest office building at 209-211 Fourth. But often they worked outdoors, sometimes as part of the colony of artists that grew up around painter George Hetzel beginning in the late 1860s at Scalp Level...
Category

1850s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"View of Upper Ausable Lake" John Bunyan Bristol, Glowing Atmospheric Landscape
Located in New York, NY
John Bunyan Bristol View of Upper Ausable Lake Signed lower right Oil on canvas 18 x 30 inches Provenance Wynant D. Vanderpoel III (1939-2018), New York and Palm Beach Estate of the...
Category

1870s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Oil Landscape of Waterfall
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Wall was born in Ireland and arrived in New York in 1812. He was already a well trained artist and soon became well known for his watercolor views of the Hudson River Valley and surr...
Category

Early 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Panel

Covered Bridge Deep in the New England Forest
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Covered Bridge Deep in the New England Forest is a captivating work that exemplifies the essence of the Hudson River School's artistic vision. This painting portrays a covered bridge...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

BLAZING Luminous SUNRISE Antique Marine Seascape Painting w/ SAILBOATs
Located in New York, NY
I’m selling this Beautiful Luminst Sunrise painting by Edward Moran (1829-1901) , a famous American Marine Hudson River painter and artist The Luminescent Glow from the rising sun i...
Category

1870s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

Dusk Forest Scene, Catskills by Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932)
Located in New York, NY
"Dusk Forest Scene, Catskills," 1875 by Hudson River School painter Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932) is oil on artists card-stock and measures 9.5 x 7 inches. The work is signed by DeForest, and dated May 13, 1875 at lower right. The work is framed in an elegant, period appropriate frame, and ready to hang. Lockwood DeForest was born in New York in 1850 to a prominent family. He grew up in Greenwich Village and on Long Island at the family summer estate in Cold Spring Harbor. As was customary for a cultivated family in the Gilded Age, the DeForests made frequent trips abroad. Excursions to the great museums, which were prominent on the DeForests agenda, deepened the young Lockwood's familiarity with European painting and sculpture. Though he had begun drawing and painting somewhat earlier, it was during a visit to Rome in 1868 that nineteen-year-old DeForest first began to study art seriously, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844–1905). More importantly, on the same trip, Lockwood met one of America’s most celebrated painters, (and his maternal great- uncle by marriage) Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who quickly became his mentor. DeForest accompanied Church on sketching trips around Italy and continued this practice when they both returned to America in 1869. Early on in his career, de Forest made a habit of recording the date and often the place of his oil sketches, as to create a visual diary of his travels. Lockwood’s profession as a landscape painter can be primarily attributed to Frederic E. Church and his belief in the young artist’s talent. DeForest often visited Church in the Hudson River community of Catskill where, in addition to sketching trips and afternoons of painting, he assisted with the architectural drawings and planning of Olana. In 1872, DeForest took a studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. During these formative years DeForest counted among his friend’s artists such as Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–80), George Henry Yewell (1830–1923), John Frederick Kensett (1816–72), Jervis McEntee (1828–91), and Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932). Over the next decade DeForest experienced success as a painter. He exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in 1872, and made two more painting trips abroad, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, traveling to the major continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa. His trip to the Middle East and the library at Church’s home, Olana, established his interest in design during his mid-twenties. From about 1878 to 1902, landscape painting was overshadowed by his activities and preoccupation with East Indian architecture and décor, a style that became quite fashionable in late nineteenth century America. From 1879-1883, de Forest founded Associated Artists along with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Oil Landscape of Cows by Stream
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
Joseph Antonio Hekking was a landscape and marine painter born in 1830 in the Netherlands and died in New York in 1903. He studied in Paris and was a talented draftsman who lived in Cherry Valley, NY, Hartford, CT, Detroit, MI, and Washington, D.C. He also exhibited paintings of the Adirondacks at the National Academy of Design (NYC). He served in the Civil War with a New York regiment and exhibited in the Detroit area after the war. He was a versatile and talented painter was active from the early 1850s to the later 1870s and he participated in major exhibitions. His paintings were inspired by visits to the Adirondacks and White Mountains. He is considered an important and relevant early American landscape...
Category

Early 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Portrait of Mother, Child, and Dog titled "The Cradle and the Companion"
Located in Fredericksburg, VA
This tender interior scene by Henry Bacon captures a moment of warmth and domestic harmony. A young mother leans gently over a carved red cradle while her daughter, dressed in a whit...
Category

Late 19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Wood, Oil

Under the Palisades, 1899
Located in New York, NY
Jasper Francis Cropsey paints a view out from the Palisades onto the Hudson River in his artwork entitled, “Under the Palisades.”
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Day in June, Scene Eastchest, New York
Located in Missouri, MO
"A Day in June, Scene Eastchest, New York" 1898 Edward Gay (Irish, American, 1837-1928) Oil on Canvas Complimented by original frame in great condition Signed and Dated Lower Right T...
Category

1890s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Trout Fisherman in a Mountain Stream
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated lower left: W. Whittredge 1861
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

View of Lake Champlain, c. 1857 by James MacDougal Hart (American: 1828–1901)
Located in New York, NY
JAMES MCDOUGAL HART (1828–1901) View of Lake Champlain, c. 1857 Oil on canvas 26 3/16 x 36 1⁄4 inches Signed lower center Exhibition History: National ...
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil

Antique American Sunset Seascape Giltwood Framed New England Harbor Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American sunset seascape oil painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring: 18 by 24 inches overall, and 12.25 by 18 painting alone.. In excellent original condition. Ha...
Category

1850s Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Hawley, Pennsylvania
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower right: RABlakelock
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Picnic On The Mohawk
Located in Milford, NH
A wonderful landscape by American artist Thomas Mickell Burnham (1818-1866). Burnham was born in Boston, MA and received informal art training early on, traveling abroad before relo...
Category

Mid-19th Century Hudson River School Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Hudson River School paintings for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Hudson River School 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 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 paintings, so small editions measuring 4 inches across are also available. Prices for 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 $14,933.

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