The Hudson River School

Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.

Romanticism and The post impressionism era are two major periods on the time line of art history. Different forms of art including paintings, music, and architecture showed tremendous growth, and ended up making history. This essay compares and contrasts pieces of work such as Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night and Joseph Mallord William Turner’s The Slave Ship. These two pieces both represent their own individual time periods, yet have similar characteristics. Both of these paintings have a way of uncovering a story without using a single word.

Daniel Ridgway Knight was an odd American artist who loved to paint relaxed French peasants in luscious landscapes. Ironically, he lived during a stressful time when the Industrial Revolution displaced numerous farmers and polluted the environment. He seemed to ignore the harsh truth and shut himself in his imaginary serene world. For instance, In the Premier Chagrin, translated as The First Grief, Knight paints two healthy girls conversing on a stone wall in front of gorgeous fields. At first, it appears as merely a pretty painting that is nicely contrasted to show depth and realism. Yet, with a closer look, this contrast in the colors and lines of the landscape and the figures creates tension to suggest the painter’s conflict between longing for serene freedom and feeling trapped within the stiff society.

Cole has no restrain in describing the beauty of all the elements found in the American scenery. He talks about the mountains, the sky, the streams, the sunset, waterfalls, all of which are overflowing in richness, full of magnificence, and unsurpassed by any other. For Cole the scenery and nature are subjects which must be present in the souls of every American. While he considers himself and even others underserving of “such a birthright”, he is thankful for the beauties given to us by nature. Cole suggests to his audience that the reason behind him painting natural scenes relates to the experiencing of a particular emotional response while doing so. This is a response which can only be compared to a “calm religious tone”, full of “tranquility and peace.” Witnessing the beauties of the American scenery, anywhere one goes, makes one realize how “the sublime and beautiful are bound together in an indissoluble chain. In gazing on it we feel as though a great void had been filled in our minds.” Cole places great emphasis on the importance for all members of society to learn how to cultivate “a taste for scenery.” This can be achieved by appreciating the physical beauty of nature and the ability of said beauty to provide mankind with a different perspective about life and with

Mary Catherine Bateson's Improvisation In a Persian Garden, Annie Dillard's Seeing and Leslie Marmon Silko's Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination

Prominent American landscape painter through the Gilded Age, Thomas Cole, argued through his series of paintings The Course of Empire that authenticity may temporarily give way to decadence but when that occurs the natural course of empire will take place and decadence will without fail crumble. This notion of Cole believing that authenticity will overcome decadence is exemplified through his personal disagreements with human vanity, his pictorial style, and his influences.

In 1910, when this school was first open, many students throughout the United States still attended classes in one-room schoolhouses. Aside from the one-room schoolhouse in Marshwood, Olyphant had progressed beyond that stage. This building was the centerpiece of the Olyphant School District. It had the look of a high school in a major city. At the time all of the streets in downtown Olyphant were paved with red brick. Most of the students lived within walking distance of the school. They were able to walk home to eat lunch. Therefore, no one ever thought of including a cafeteria in the building plans. It was built without a cafeteria or kitchen of any kind.

The school that I observed is Ps/Ms ABC 123 in the Bronx. The school is from Kindergarten to 8th grade. The school starts promptly at 8:00am. Free breakfast is served to all students who wish to eat. In the morning the school doors are open for students at 7:50am. From 7:45 -8:05, it looks busy around the school because of the people who drop their children off, some comes in cars and some walk their children to school. People have to cross a main road to drop off their children at school so the traffic on the main road moves slow and the traffic instructor also stand there to guide people when it is safe to cross the street. The assistant principal and other receivers stand outside in the playground. The playground has many exits that open to the gymnasium, cafeteria and auditorium. Parents know which exist they have to drop of their children. The first grade that I was observing, they are dropped off by exist 5. Exist 5 open in the auditorium. The principles and the other receiver meet with the parents and the children. Parents also talk to each other. They also can sit on the benches in the children’s play area if they have to wait or pass their time. Only students are allowed to go inside of these exits with assistants. Anyone else have to go the front main entrance to enter the school building. Once the students are received, they go inside the auditorium and from there they are then taken to the classroom by their teachers.

The first American group of painters, The Hudson School of Romantic Landscapes, was lead by Thomas Cole, who was born in 1801 in England. He went to Philadelphia and Ohio as a traveling portrait painter in 1819. In addition, he traveled to Europe where he painted many Italian subjects, and later many of the scenes in his paintings came from his European studies. He died in 1848 at the age of 47. Cole’s artwork represents the Romantic style of painting, especially in his famous work The Oxbow (Fulwider 618). In the life and time around Thomas Cole, three things stand out. The major themes in Cole’s artwork, what was romantic about the Hudson River School’s art, and why landscape was a national religious symbol for Americans.

I am analyzing the form and content of a stylized painting entitled The Palisades by John William Hill. This was found in the collection section of themetmusuem.org which was painted during the pre Raphaelite movement; when artist emphasized meticulous detail in what was observed rather than imagined nature. This artwork shows the aesthetics of nature, depicting a peaceful scenery with spacious green acres during the year of the 1870s. During the late 18th centuries, natural resources weren’t highly industrialized and that in itself shows how nature was essential for all human species. I argue that this painting shows how everything in nature connects and communicates with one another.

Children can’t learn, how to stand on their own legs from someone tried to overbalance them!

A substitute teacher at Gorsuch West Elementary School in Ohio reportedly stopped a third-grader from reading her Bible during their free reading time, causing the girl to come home crying.

Thomas Cole was an 19th Century American artist who has been regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School. This was an American art movement that was known for the realistic and in depth portrayal of the American landscape and of its wilderness, both of which were heavily influenced by romanticism. One finds their ideals in the symbolic depiction of magnificent landscapes filled with literary references, sometimes close to fantastic themes. Cole’s creative process involved the creation of what he called a mind eye vision of those sites he had previously visited. He would use his senses to depict how things should look, in addition to relaying on the drawings he had made while on the field. Many of this on site sketches and drawings are full of notes where he describes the colors, the geographical formations, and the atmospheric effects at the time. Cole would make use of these factors in creating works which were both

Throughout the poem, the ocean metaphor juxtaposes the static plots, highlighting the results of structured government in the United States. Before the travelers arrived, an “emerald ocean” spanned the land (Dickey 18, 6). The native grasses “undulated,” which the different line lengths mimic (1). Even with the introduction of new plants, they all work harmoniously, creating a “medley” (7). The ocean metaphor symbolizes the fluidity that people can obtain before the structure of strong government and systemic structures. However, once the travelers arrive, “the ocean...is drained” to build a town (9). They devolve the ocean into “neat and static squares” (12). Again, the lines parallel the plants, transitioning from undulating lengths to boxy, straight-cut lines similar to the “rows and columns straight” of the plots (14). The structure created classes, giving greater opportunities to those they deemed important and worthy, while the unwanted were relegated to bad plots: “Fruitful nearest the cottage” while “Shrubs to the darkest plot” (18, 19). Government and this perpetual culture have divided America into groups based on type, not fluid, not interacting, only giving different levels of worth depending on what they find most helpful. Once a land of fluidity, symbiotic relationship, everyone worked together, on an equal footing.

In Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay “Nature,” and Sarah Orne Jewett's short story “A White Heron,” the authors use nature to convey the primitiveness of civilization. Twain shows this concept through perversions of natural law in his text. Emerson conveys this idea by pointing out the follies in society. Jewett demonstrates this notion by the use of symbolism. Understanding the hidden connections of these three texts will help one to have a deeper working knowledge of the texts and their buried social commentaries.