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June Issue 2004
NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, Features Paintings from Hudson River School
The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC will display some of the nation's finest examples of American landscape paintings when it presents American Eden: Landscape Paintings of the Hudson River School from the Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
The exhibition opens June 6 and runs through Aug. 29, 2004. American Eden includes more than 50 works by 25 artists.
The Hudson River school, a group of painters active in the 19th century in New York, was the first truly American school of painting. Artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Asher B. Durand and Albert Bierstadt, among others, created philosophically and aesthetically robust landscape scenes of young America and beyond. American Eden presents some of the finest examples of these landscape paintings.
"The exhibition sheds light on a time in American history when the country was grappling with issues of national identity," said Dr. Lawrence J. Wheeler, director of the North Carolina Museum of Art. "The paintings show a country distinguishing itself from Europe and celebrating what was uniquely American - the landscape."
Certainly landscape painting helped create a national identity for the young America. The beauty of its natural scenery was emblematic both of America's history and future potential. The scale and awesome power of untouched nature inspired a spiritual reverence as well.
The painters of the Hudson River school were influenced by writers of the period, including Henry David Thoreau and James Fennimore Cooper, among others. Their paintings celebrated the novelties of nature unique to the nation - untouched forests, soaring mountain peaks, misty beaches and mighty waterfalls.
The works in the show are large in scale, some more than 10 feet wide. The expansive canvases impart the grandeur of the scenes they depict. Frederic Church's 1846 painting of Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford measures just over five feet in width. It is significant in scale and subject, and depicts early settlers traveling from Massachusetts to Connecticut. The historical event was important to Church, who was a Connecticut native, but nature is fundamental to his painting. The travelers are dwarfed by a monumental rocky cliff, gigantic trees and a river winding far off into a vast, mountainous horizon.
Asher B. Durand's View toward the Hudson Valley of 1851 is equally momentous in scope. The two figures in the painting look out into a cultivated valley while one gestures expansively to the stretch of land below. The painting shows the domination of man over the natural landscape and imparts a feeling of confidence and optimism about progress.
American Eden includes these sublime vistas of the American landscape as well as many others. It also offers a glimpse into another phenomenon that gained popularity in the 19th century - travel. As travel and tourism increased, the Hudson River school added paintings of foreign locales to their repertoire of American images, including panoramic scenes of South America, the Caribbean and Europe. Still, in all the paintings, the awesome power of nature is manifest.
The 55 works featured in American Eden: Landscape Paintings of the Hudson River School from the Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art depict America in the 19th century. They are sublime, powerful visions of the American landscape and hold within them ideas and beliefs that shaped the future of the nation.
For more info check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 919/839-6262 or at (www.ncartmuseum.org).
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