9781422276457

THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL

The Return of Rip Van Winkle J ohn Q uidor . 1829; oil on canvas; 39 1/4 x 49 3/4. (100 x 126 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington. Andrew Mellon Collection, 1942. Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book . Influenced by eighteenth- century English caricaturist John Rowlandson, Quidor developed an eerie and macabre world in which eyes protrude and faces are twisted on the verge of lunacy. Here, Rip Van Winkle claims not to know who he is. Quidor found the perfect foil for his unique style in

An American Romantic In 1801, the year Cole was born in Bolton- le-Moor, Lancashire, England, the American painter Washington Allston was studying in London with his compatriot Benjamin West at the Royal Academy. The American-born West had been appointed president of the institution in 1792, a position he held until his death in 1820. It was Allston who introduced an unusual combination of Classicism and ominous Roman- ticism to an austere and censorious American audience. Allston’s education abroad, which continued until 1808, was not confined to London. In 1803 the artist went to Paris to take in the Louvre, and in 1804 he traveled to Rome, where the accom- plishments of the Venetian masters proved to have a decided effect on his early figural compo- sitions. The landscapes Allston produced while in Rome showed that he had consolidated his mastery of both approved styles and traditional scenic elements—the Italian Alps, the pines of Rome, and the campagna.

A New Pantheon In 1809 Irving unveiled his recognition of the problem in his Knickerbocker’s History of New York: “How convenient it would be to . . . our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.” As the pseudonymous Diedrich Knicker- bocker, Irving took American self-consciousness and recognition of uniquely American regional types and produced a mythology for a new world in answer to the old world’s classical one. This mythopoeic effort to make up for America’s sparse folklore formed the first steps in a process that would also establish a basis for a national sense of nature’s sublimity, an occasionally rigid belief that would serve to embolden the Hudson River School’s concentrated attention on Amer- ican scenery and legitimize both the content and interpretations advanced by the school’s numerous followers.

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