Hudson River School of Art to be showcased

Posted by ChaddsFordLive on March 16, 2016

Masterworks by Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, John F. Kensett, William T. Richards, William L. Sonntag, and other giants of the Hudson River School will be on view at the Brandywine River Museum of Art from March 19 through June 12.

'Niagara Falls,' an 1818 painting by Louisa Davis Minot, is one of the Hudson Valley works featured in the new exhibit at the Brandywine River Museum of Art. Photo courtesy of the museum — 'Niagara Falls,' an 1818 painting by Louisa Davis Minot, is one of the Hudson River works featured in the new exhibit at the Brandywine River Museum of Art. *Photo courtesy of the museum*

Organized by the New York Historical Society from its vast holdings of works by the Hudson River School, “The Poetry of Nature: A Golden Age of American Landscape Painting” features over 40 paintings created between 1818 and 1886, according to a Brandywine River Museum of Art press release.

More than 25 celebrated American artists, also including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Chambers, Sanford Gifford, Thomas H. Hotchkiss, Jervis McEntee, Louisa Minot, Francis A. Silva and Josephine Walters, will be represented in the exhibition. The Hudson River School is considered the first art movement in the country and one that developed a distinctly American vision of the landscape, the release said.

These artists were inspired to explore the landscape by the writers of their time whose stories, essays and poems extolled the pristine, primeval quality and symbolic virtue of America’s natural beauty. Hudson River artists’ powerful interpretations of American scenery are illuminated in the exhibition’s arrangement highlighting the regions they frequently painted – along the Hudson River, through the Catskill Mountains and other regions of New York, and beyond to New England and the mid-Atlantic states.

The boundless vistas, stately forests, magnificent mountains, gleaming rivers and lakes, and luminous skies the Hudson River School artists created in their paintings shaped national and cultural identity not only for their own time, but also formed an enduring legacy for future generations.

The Brandywine River Museum of Art features an outstanding collection of American art housed in a 19th-century mill building with a dramatic steel and glass addition overlooking the banks of the Brandywine. Open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., except Thanksgiving Day and Christmas, the museum is located on Route 1 in Chadds Ford. For more information, call 610-388-2700 or visit brandywinemuseum.org. Starting on March 19, the museum will extend its hours slightly – from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.