We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals minuscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”
Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn - On the Hudson River, 1860, oil on canvas, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1963.9.1

Hudson River School

This loosely organized group of mid–19th century Americans shared an interest in landscape painting. Not limited to depicting New York’s Hudson River Valley, they traveled and painted throughout the US, South America, and Europe.

  • We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”
  • We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals minuscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”
  • A pink-toned sandy beach meets a placid body of pale blue water under a hazy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. To our left, the beach curves like a letter C to end in the near distance with a terracotta-orange rocky outcropping and a boulder, which comes halfway across the composition. Muted green trees grow atop the outcropping, and the left half is blanketed in moss or grass. A white rowboat has been pulled into the sand about halfway along the beach. One person sits or crouches inside, and a red cloth or net hangs over the side closer to us. A person wearing a straw hat, white, long-sleeved shirt, and brown pants carries a basket over one arm as they walk away from us, not far from the rowboat. The water is very light blue where it laps gently at the shore but is washed by diffuse sunlight to parchment white in the distance. The horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas, nearly blends into the milky white bank of clouds above. A few sailboats are near the horizon on the right half of the painting, and a few small patches of blue sky show through the clouds in the upper right corner.
  • We look through a tropical forest lining a hazy, wide, placid river in this horizontal landscape painting. Densely packed trees, bushes, and plants create shadowed, thickly forested banks along both sides of the river. The trees are covered with climbing vines, and they have gnarled, sprawling branches. Light catches the flat leaves of a palm-like plant close to us to our left, and once we take a closer look, we find two minuscule black birds with cherry-red chests perched on a long curving stem. The vegetation is reflected in the water’s surface into the distance, where it becomes pale mauve-pink and blends imperceptibly with the sky and clouds. A flock of white birds create a long line low over the water to our right. The sun is a small disk of white low in the humid sky amid pale lavender-purple clouds. The sun reflects in the calm surface of the water below, and it brings our attention to a person rowing a canoe, barely visible on the river in the deep, misty distance.
  • From a little above a dirt road, we look past a grove of trees to a broad plain and a lake at the foot of towering, hazy mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The narrow, teal-blue lake runs from left to right along the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition so the hills and mountains take up most of the picture. On the far shore of the lake, steep hills are thick with fern-green trees and growth. Beyond these hills, muted gray and green rocky mountains reach precipitously into the clear, robin’s egg-blue sky so some nearly touch the top edge of the canvas. Snow nestles in the mountain peaks while gauzy mist hovers among the mountain tops. The meadow below is a patchwork of avocado-green and sand-brown fields. An ice-blue stream winds from the lake across the plain while olive-green trees and shrubs dot the fields. Closest to us, in the lower left corner of the painting, small stones and clumps of green grass run along the dirt road, and boulders line it to either side. A band of dark green spanning the road creates a screen a short distance from us, in the lower left quadrant of the composition. Through the trees is a view of minuscule buildings lining the lakeside. In the shadows, under the trees, people camp with a covered wagon covered in white fabric and several animals including a donkey. A red and yellow fire glows, almost lost in the deep shadows of the trees, next to the people. On our right, about a dozen people with a horse-drawn wagon, all tiny in scale, work in the field next to the stream. Farther along the stream, another wagon approaches a covered bridge. On our right and close to us, a dark shadow falls across the landscape. Beyond the shadow, a group of buildings with a church in the center sit on a low hill.
  • We look across the gleaming, forest-green surface of a lake at the foot of tall, jagged mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The lake is flanked by a steep, gingerbread-brown hill on the left and a shoreline that forms a backward C curving from the lower center around and back along the right side of the composition. Strong sunlight from the upper left illuminates the center of the left-hand hill and the shoreline. The ground to our right is carpeted in rust-red, sage-green, and tan growth and is dotted with boulders. Tall trees with rust-brown trunks, crooked branches, and narrow canopies of caramel-brown and olive-green leaves fill the far end. Closest to us are dead tree trunks jutting out of the water and or lying on a flat, rocky outcropping nearby. Beyond the outcropping is a small black bear wandering down a sliver of sand-colored ground at the water’s edge. The hill on the left is covered with vertical rows of upright jagged boulders and slender, dark green trees marching up its slopes. A narrow, artic-blue waterfall cascades down its right side to empty into the lake. A thick layer of towering blue-gray clouds rises over the hill and lake, stretching back to the looming, snow-covered peaks that nearly brush the top edge of the canvas. The sky around the peak is vivid blue, scattered with high white clouds. The artist signed the lower right, “ABierstadt” with the A and B joined as a monogram.
  • We hover over the bottle-green surface of a river as it rushes toward a horseshoe-shaped waterfall that curves away from us in this horizontal landscape painting. The water is white and frothy right in front of us, where the shelf of the riverbed changes levels near the edge of the falls. Across from us, the water is also white where it falls over the edge. A thin, broken rainbow glints in the mist near the upper left corner of the painting and continues its arc farther down, between the falls. The horizon line is just over halfway up the composition. Plum-purple clouds sweep into the composition at the upper corners against a lavender-colored sky. Tiny trees and a few buildings line the shoreline to the left and right in the deep distance.
  • Hulking mountains are mostly backlit against a watery blue sky edged with shell pink along the horizon, which comes about two-thirds of the way up this horizontal landscape painting. Light falls across felled and gnarled trees along the bottom edge of the canvas. Two thin trunks, one of them broken to a jagged point, rise along the left edge of the composition with their green leaves outlined against the sky. The land dips steeply away into a valley wending between forested mountains. Fog has settled along the valley like a river of mist. The mountains lighten from dark, earthy green and brown close to us to muted fawn-brown in the distance. A sliver of pale-yellow sun peeks over the summit of the nearest mountain, which is to our left. Clouds kick up over the distant mountaintops, and a few wisps of peach-colored clouds float across the blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in black paint on a branch on the ground in the lower center, “T. Cole 1826.”
  • A man sits on a sheer, rocky outcropping high above a sunlit expanse of land that stretches to meet a sun-dappled sea in this horizontal painting. The outcropping slopes in to fill the right half of the composition, and is partially carpeted by mustard-yellow, brown, and moss-green growth. Bright sunlight from the upper right glints off some of the craggy, steel-gray rock faces. The man is tiny in scale within the composition, and sits near the top right with his legs stretched out in front of him. He wears a denim-blue shirt, tan pants, and soft hat with a narrow brim. He appears to have red hair and a beard. He holds a white object in front of him, presumably paper or a notebook. Behind him an open box of paints and brushes sits near a camp stool with a closed white parasol planted next to it. A lower hill in the middle distance slopes in from the left side and disappears behind the outcroppingin the center of the composition. The hill is covered with muted and dark greens and yellows, suggesting a forest of pine trees. The hill descends to meet the flat, mauve-tinted land, which is crisscrossed with shallow fissures. In the distance, the area where the narrow band of powder-blue sea meets the sky, about three-quarters of the way up the canvas, is painted with a tan-colored haze. The artist signed the work in the lower right as if he had carved his name and the date into the rock. It reads, “S R Gifford 1865.”
  • Far below us, a river winds through a valley lined with hazy mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. In the distance, the line of mountains emerges from the left, near the top of the canvas, and marches down toward the center, growing lighter and mistier in the distance. Streaks of olive-green growth drape down their sides, and pale sunlight from the upper right warms their craggy faces, which are painted in tones of peach, tan, taupe, and parchment white with pewter-gray fissures. The mountains move across the canvas and angle way from us, to our right. There, they are overlapped, just off center, by a tree-covered slope that emerges from the right. At its foot is a steel-gray river that winds from the lower right toward the center of the composition. The land sweeps down from the left side, spreading out into meadows that meet the river. They are carpeted in moss green with streaks and patches of rust-brown earth and scattered with clusters of trees painted in tones of celery, olive, and pine green. Closest to us and near the lower left corner of the painting, is a man, tiny in scale, on a flat bluff. He wears a white coat and trousers, and sits hunched on a stool facing our left. He looks toward a grove of trees with pea-green leaves and ginger-brown trunks that tower over him, along the left edge of the composition. He has turned away from a painting on an easel that stands just beyond him, and an open wooden box that sits on the ground behind him. A closed, seafoam-green parasol also lies nearby. Just beyond the lip of the bluff and down in the valley are creamy white dots that suggest livestock. Farther back, near the foot of the mountains, a cluster of buildings sit near the tree line in the meadow. Wispy white clouds drift through the light azure-blue sky. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “THOS.MORAN.1864 OP.8.”
  • A band of indigenous Americans ride horses toward and through a herd of buffalo, which spreads along a river that winds through plains to mountains in the deep distance in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is lit with golden light that warms the browns and harvest yellow of the landscape. Several dead or injured buffalo lie across the ground close to us, along with the body of one hunter, barely visible between the bodies of two animals. Just beyond the corpses, one hunter rides a rearing white horse as he lifts a spear lined with feathers high over a charging buffalo to our right of center. Facing away from us, the rider has light brown skin and a feather headdress over long dark hair. He wears a pumpkin-orange loincloth and red and orange bands encircle the ankle, thigh, wrist, and upper arm facing us. Sage-green grass grows in tufts on the dirt ground, which is littered with several animal skulls around the charging buffalo and rider. A smaller buffalo looks on from our left, and a prairie dog pokes its head out of hole in the ground in the lower left corner. A little distance away to our right, along the edge of the canvas, seven hunters gallop into the scene, leaning forward over their horses’ necks. The dozen or so buffalo nearby, as well as a fox and two deer, move away from the hunters, headed to our left. Hundreds of buffalo dot the landscape along the banks of the winding river and some wade in the water. A few trees rise on the plain but the land is mostly flat until it reaches the mountains and cliffs along the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition. Forms along the horizon could be a line of clouds or snow-covered moutains in the deep distance. A few wispy white clouds float across the watery blue sky above. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner: “Albert Bierstadt.”
  • A large, dark sailing ship to our left is stranded near the shore, angled dramatically away from us, in choppy waves under a periwinkle-blue sky streaked with gray and copper-colored clouds in this horizontal painting. Two tall masts on the ship angle steeply away, showing that the boat nearly lies on its side. The third mast is broken. The rigging is askew and the sails are tattered. Light catches a steel-blue band around the deck. Broken pieces of masts, swaths of limp, gray sails, thick rope, and a wooden barrel on its side are scattered along the beach in front of us. Bottle-green waves break gently on the beach, but white foam kicks up around the hull. Low, bronze-brown rocks jut outwards from the beach to our left. To our right, a pale, yellow sun glows hazily just over the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the canvas. The dark gray clouds brighten to pale yellow, lavender purple, and mauve pink along the edges and near the sun. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had inscribed a board lying in the shadow cast by the barrel in the lower right corner: “A.B.Durand 1884.”
  • Near a verdant riverbank against soaring, hazy cliffs, a nude, chubby baby sits in a golden boat on a bed of pink and white flowers in this horizontal painting. A winged angel wearing a white robe with a glowing starburst hovering overhead stands behind the child with one hand resting on the tiller of the boat. The angel and child both have pale skin and blond hair. The baby holds up handfuls of flowers and looks forward. The bow of the boat is angled to our right as it glides along the glassy surface of the river. The boat seems to be made of or carved to look like a mass of gold, winged angels clustered to make the vessel. They reach toward a single angel thrust forward from the bow, like a masthead, who holds up an hourglass. The boat has just emerged from a dark cave at the base of rocky, rose-pink cliffs that reach off the top left edge of the canvas. The jagged peaks become pale pink as they march into the distance. A spit of the lush riverbank fills the lower left corner of the composition; it and the far bank are dotted with white waterlilies and a profusion of yellow, blue, pink, purple, and red flowers. Celery and moss-green growth carpets the boulders on either side the cave mouth and the ground stretching beyond the riverbank. The growth becomes mauve-purple as it recedes to the horizon, which comes a third of the way up the composition and is lit by a golden glow. Petal-pink and gray clouds float among the cliff-tops against an otherwise pale blue sky. The artist dated and signed the lower left, “1842 T. Cole Rome.”

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We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals minuscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”

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This square portrait shows the head and shoulders of a young woman in front of a spiky bush that fills much of the background except for a landscape view that extends into the deep distance to our right. The woman's body is angled to our right but her face turns to us. She has chalk-white, smooth skin with heavily lidded, light brown eyes, and her pale pink lips are closed. Pale blush highlights her cheeks, and she looks either at us or very slightly away from our eyes. Her brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back, but tight, lively curls frame her face. Her hair turns gold where the light shines on it. She wears a brown dress, trimmed along the square neckline with gold. The front of the bodice is tied with a blue ribbon, and the lacing holes are also edged with gold. A sheer white veil covers her chest and is pinned at the center with a small gold ball. The bush fills the space around her head with copper-brown, spiky leaves. A river winds between trees and rolling hills in the distance to our right. Trees and a town along the horizon, which comes about halfway up the painting, is pale blue under an ice-blue sky.

Painting

Since ancient times, artists have made paintings to tell stories or capture beauty. They’ve used egg tempera, oil, and more recently acrylic to create compositions of all shapes and sizes. The results include radiant altarpieces, striking portraits, luminous landscapes, and abstract expressions.

We look across rolling, bright green pastures and honey-brown farmland to a cluster of buildings nestled beyond a copse of trees, along the horizon in this horizontal, stylized landscape painting. The scene is painted with mostly flat areas of color. Closest to us, low, vibrant green pastures are bisected by a narrow, gingerbread-brown path. The path meanders from the lower left corner of the composition to a metal gate, near the right edge of the painting. A short distance from us to our left, a man wearing navy-blue pants, shirt, and hat walks along the top of a hill, hands in pockets. Two black and white cows and one brown and white cow graze nearby. In the distance, the copse of trees is painted with pockets of pumpkin orange, lavender purple, sky blue, and spring and muted sage green. Beyond the trees, a white, square, two-story house with a spruce-blue roof sits within the grouping of buildings. Another white building with a blue roof stands a bit to our right. Wisps of white clouds dot a vivid blue sky, which is tinted with pale pink and lilac purple near the horizon. The artist signed and dated the work in harvest yellow against a mound of dark brown rocks in the lower right corner: “P. Gauguin 90.”

Landscapes

The beauty of the natural world has beguiled artists for centuries, and they have taken a wide variety of approaches to depicting it. Impressionists studied light and color, the artists of the Hudson Valley School created monumental views of the American sublime. And abstract artists have capture how landscapes feel rather than how they appear.