Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was America’s first major art movement, a group of landscape painters active from about 1825 to 1875 who celebrated the wild beauty of the young nation. Founded by Thomas Cole and carried forward by Asher B. Durand and Frederic Edwin Church, the movement began in New York’s Hudson River Valley, the Catskills, and the Adirondacks, then followed explorers west. Its artists blended careful, realistic detail with glowing light and a spiritual sense of nature, often linked to Romanticism and Luminism. This section features Albert Bierstadt, the German born painter whose huge canvases of the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite thrilled audiences, and Thomas Moran, whose Yellowstone scenes helped persuade Congress to create the first national park in 1872. Each WooArts profile explains the artist’s life, technique, and most famous works in clear, friendly language. Explore how these painters shaped how Americans saw, valued, and protected their land.
Thomas Moran | Hudson River School
Thomas Moran was an American painter born in Bolton, England, in 1837, famous for landscapes of the Rocky Mountains and the American West. His paintings helped convince Congress to create Yellowstone…
Albert Bierstadt | Hudson River School
Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter born in Solingen, Prussia, in 1830, who immigrated to the United States as a child and later trained in Düsseldorf before returning to pursue art…
