The Hudson River School—a loose fraternity of American landscape artists—was neither a school nor confined to the Hudson River Valley. Beginning in the early 19th century, the painters most associated with this group drew inspiration from America’s unspoiled landscape, finding aesthetic taste, a feeling of nationalism, and spirituality in the wilderness. At about the same time they were creating their idealized landscapes, progress in the form of industrialization and Manifest Destiny began to erode the vision of a pristine American “Garden of Eden.”

Art historian Bonita Billman examines the work of Hudson River School artists Thomas Cole, Frederic E. Church, Asher B. Durand, and others. She also considers the painters’ influences and methods and how these shaped the work of American landscapists of a second generation.

Billman is retired from the department of history and art history at Georgetown University.

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