Full glory

WAM brings the Hudson River to Worcester

by Leon Nigrosh

ALL THAT IS GLORIOUS AROUND US: PAINTINGS FROM THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL

At the Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street, through June 27.

Imagine an unblemished America. A place so rugged and beautiful, with mammoth cliffs halting at a pond's shore or tree groves tucked in the shadows of craggy mountains, that God alone could have

created it. This connection between God and nature is what inspired 19th-century American landscape painters -- Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt among them -- to first put brush to canvas and soon be deemed the "Hudson River School," America's first national school of loosely affiliated artists who traveled and exhibited together.

Influenced by European landscape masters, expressly 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain (known for his perfection in rendering light, also a characteristic of 19th-century landscape painters), the Hudson School artists gained prominence in the middle of the 1850s. It was a time when America yearned to experience the beauty of nature -- and see unpopulated land as far away as California -- in a society that was rapidly building urban, eastern, industrialized centers, particularly New York City from where painters Cole and later Church escaped for the serenity some 200 miles north in the foothills of the Catskills.

The popularity of their work, however, has vacillated over the years, ultimately undone by the attention Impressionism enjoyed starting the late 1800s. In fact, the moniker "Hudson River School" was first applied by a cruel critic, obviously unmoved by the landscapes that became instantly popular with New York's elite, who perhaps saw vistas to conquer in the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Hudson River School painters, though, saw it as their destiny to depict God's promise, predict the effects of westward expansion, and show European naysayers that America did indeed have vast and devastatingly beautiful land.

Nature's spirituality and the sublime are two themes that carry "All That Is Glorious Around Us," WAM's new show, which features more than 80 works by the era's painters. The exhibit of 50 artists' work, primarily drawn from a private collection, provides a look at both the message and the techniques used by the country's first native school.

British-born Thomas Cole (1801-1848) is generally considered to be the "Father of the Hudson River School," starting in the early 1820s when he made his first plein-air sketches near his home in Catskill on the Hudson River (interestingly enough, these painters did most of their work in studio, relying on detailed sketches). Nature poet William Cullen Bryant and novelist James Fenimore Cooper took immediately to Cole's style (which, like his contemporaries' work, was characteristically painted with just a thin layer of paint and featured a low horizon line) and appreciated the way he wrapped moralistic tales into his landscapes. A longtime admirer of British Romantic landscape painters J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, Cole had the opportunity to meet and exhibit with them on a trip to England in 1829. With his ever increasing popularity, he became successful both financially and publicly. In the 1840 exhibition of his large commission The Voyage of Life more than half a million people viewed Cole's paintings and thousands of prints were sold.

The Hudson River School genre was (and to some extent still is) often faulted for its exuberant optimism: the leaves on the trees are too shiny, the air is too crisp and clear, the waters and mountains too colorful. But on closer examination the underlying themes of preservation or a sense of loss are discovered. In Cole's tiny painting, Indians Viewing Landscape, colorful outcroppings and distant cloudlike mountains are jointed by the Native Americans positioned near a lighting-blasted tree -- a symbol of nature's power to destroy, which reappears throughout Hudson River School works.

Cole's two large canvases, Past and Present, foretell of a coming downfall. The first painting is overflowing with the rowdy enthusiasm of the joust. Combatants are cheered on by an audience, several of its members peering from the windows and battlements of a flag-festooned stone castle. In the companion canvas, the castle lies in ruins, its dark stone walls covered with moss and gnarled vines. A single shepherd gazes at the destruction. Was Cole merely concerned with ruins of the building or the ruins of American culture?

Specifically Cole's and many of his compatriots' concerns focused on America's rush to embrace Industrialism, which they remained ambivalent toward, with its quick and unchecked consumption of natural resources. And there was no better example than the government-sponsored notion of Manifest Destiny. First promulgated in Congress in 1846, westward expansion was first uttered by Massachusetts Representative Robert Winthrop, who stated that it was white America's God-given right to march across the continent and "civilize" it. As much as the artists tried to ignore a burgeoning United States culture, the influences constantly crept into their work.

So too did well-defined artistic influences that had dictated European paintings throughout the 18th and into the 19th century. Three powerful painting genres, categorized as either "Sublime," "Beautiful," or "Picturesque" and including both Baroque and Romantic works, had been adhered to in painting schools throughout Europe primarily in the 1800s -- they were styles emulated by many Hudson River School painters and were later modified to fit what was soon to be a unique American way of presenting subject matter, positioning, and painting technique.

WAM curator of American art David Brigham has focused on these European distinctions as seen in Hudson River School works. Several pieces have been pulled out because they represent "Sublime"-- which is categorized for its dark canvases and dramatic brush strokes (depicting nature's shear force usually through fire or storm). Needham, Massachusetts, artist Alvan Fisher (1792-1863) painted his Storm in the Valley with roiling clouds about to sweep across the sunlit sky -- much to the consternation of the cowherd in the foreground. Here again we see those lightning-struck trees.

Baltimore artist Arthur Quartley (1839-1886) mixes healthy and dead trees in Sunset in the Catskills while posing a lone raven against a fiery sunset as portent of things to come. Philadelphian William Sheridan Young (active from 1866 to 1876) uses his blazing sunset and dying trees in memory of John Kensett, one of the Hudson River School's better-known artists.

"Beautiful" and "Picturesque" too were evidenced in Hudson River School works. Though both distinctions aimed at paintings that depicted and evoked feelings of love, reverie, and harmony with nature (employing smooth, light, highly structured canvases), it was Picturesque that best categorizes 19th-century American painters. Pennsylvanian William Louis Sonntag's 1864 oil-on-canvas, Autumn Landscape, is a prime example. High key color blended with the rolling curves of the mountains and the mirror glass river create an aura of tranquillity. The two tiny fishermen who appear to ignore the placid landscape act as surrogates for the viewer, inviting us to take a closer, longer look. The trees and bushes are all in good health, with the exception of a small tree trunk in the corner. What makes this picture darkly incongruous is the realization that it was produced in the thick of the Civil War years. Could it be that the members of the Hudson River School ignored the war by simply continuing to travel and paint vast scenes throughout?

Some, however, looked inward, creating closed systems that reflected God's smaller influences in nature. Asher Durand (1796-1886), born in New Jersey and considered part of the first generation (of which there were three) of Hudson School painters. His Woodland Interior, painted in 1855, shows nature as a sheltering and closed system. Trees grow and die, leaves bloom then fall to nurture new life -- and the cycle continues. Durand referred to works like this as "Chapels in the Woods." Enter these places and feel closer to God.

Scotsman James McDougal Hart (1828-1901) also portrayed the life cycle of nature in his rendition of Loon Lake. Excellent brushwork, limited palette, and the ability to imitate hazy light all contribute to this glimpse of a lazy late summer day unencumbered by any human distraction.

But like Cole who battled man's encroachment on unharvested America so did others. Walter Oddie's 1852 painting, Fishing in Upstate New York, shows one fisherman almost consumed by the lush foliage. Rhode Island artist Henry Ary (c. 1807-1852) gives us a view of rolling countryside with a red-vested farmer allowing his few cows to roam freely through the trees -- including many alive with color but one stripped of all leaves. Soon, as in William Mason Brown's Three Men in a Landscape, painted in 1855, and also in an 1861 painting by Hart's sister, Julie Hart Beers, titled Farm on the Hudson, stone walls and fences begin to define the countryside. Philadelphia artist Thomas Doughty's View of Swampscott, Massachusetts portrays a landscape with a distant bayfront village. What makes this composition startling is the locomotive seen cutting through the placid scene. It's a hint at the demise of town life in the wake of industrialization and the new technology.

Another luminary of the Hudson River School, Ohio-born Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910), gives us a more realistic (in not fatalistic) version of the changes wrought by man. View of Cincinnati is inhabited by a number of deer and fawn seemingly in their natural habitat. In truth this is a deer park cordoned off from the bustling city by a stand of planted trees. The work is a straightforward representation, but clearly a moral position is being taken. A work by John Hermann Carmiencke (1810-1867) presents a similar situation. In his Catskill Clove, painted 40 years after Cole first sketched this forested hideaway, a cluster of sawmills intrudes.

As more and more of the public saw the luscious paintings by the Hudson River artists, the longing to travel grew. Fortunately steam engines, steamboats, and motor coaches were making inroads, and the cult of tourism blossomed -- and the relationship between tour agencies and the artists enabled both to profit. Today, when we view Homer Dodge Martin's Saranac Lake or Thomas P. Rossiter's Niagara Falls -- all shown so conspicuously unexplored -- we must remember that the loading dock and the train station are just out of view.

One example of how tourism began to effect the landscape can be seen in Ernest Lotichius's Falls of the Kaaterskill painted in 1857. Still adhering to the basic tenets of the Hudson River genre, Lotichius presents nature at its grandest. The double falls cascade hundreds of feet through trees, dwarfing the artist and his companion. At the very top, in the gray mist, a pale structure can be seen -- supposedly an observation building. But according to Irish painter William Guy Wall who painted the same falls 30 years prior, the building was a sawmill and the owner had dammed the falls to run his operation. When tourists arrived, he would gladly let the waters flow -- for a fee.

Of all the members of the Hudson River School, possibly the best-known and most flamboyant was German-born Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902). In 1859 he joined Colonel Frederick Lander's expedition to discover an overland route to the far West. Returning to New York City with detailed sketches, Bierstadt unleashed his talents and began to produce lavishly painted and immediately sought-after panoramas of the new West. His financial success funded the building of a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, where he continued to create spiritually uplifting views of lakes and mountains across America. But with the close of the Civil War and through the years of Reconstruction, his work -- and the ideals of the Hudson River School -- fell out of favor with the public. After his mansion burned to the ground, he returned to New York City and lived out his remaining years in obscurity.

For many decades since then, works produced by members of the Hudson River School languished in dark places and the names of most of the people were forgotten. Why the recently renewed interest in these rather idealistic and somewhat sentimental artists? As we approach a new millennium with all its impending uncertainties, we can be more sympathetic with the emotions they expressed through their work. Perhaps we've simply grown tired of the in-your-face art, and we desire a return to simpler, more recognizable subjects. Instead of being confronted by oblique and imponderable work, we pine for nostalgia, for brighter, more romantic art delivered by the Hudson River School.

The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 799-4406.