The Hudson River School.

Landscape painting became the first major art movement to emerge in America after the Revolutionary War. Around 1820 a group of artists living and working in the Catskill Mountain region of New York began producing large-scale, dramatic scenes of the American wilderness. Profoundly influenced by contemporary writers such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant, the Hudson River artists expressed pride and awe for the unspoiled American landscape. Far from being "pure landscape" artists, the Hudson River School excelled at romantic depictions of nature and often infused their paintings with moral and literary themes. Thomas Cole (1801-1848), a self-taught artist and the leading member of the group, combined allegory with his magnificent outdoor settings. The paintings of Cole and his colleagues Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), J. F. Cropsey (1823-1900), and Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) revealed their spiritual reverence...