Hudson River School - Selected artists working in the Hudson River School style

A group of 19th-c US landscape painters, including Thomas Cole (1801–48) and Thomas Doughty (1793–1856). The Hudson R valley and Catskill Mts provided favourite subjects.

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism. Their paintings depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, as well as the Catskill Mountains, Adirondack Mountains, and White Mountains of New Hampshire. Note that "school" in this sense refers to a group of people whose outlook, inspiration, output, or style demonstrates a common thread, rather than a learning institution.

Hudson River School paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century: discovery, exploration, and settlement. Hudson River School landscapes are characterized by their realistic, detailed, and sometimes idealized portrayal of nature. In general, Hudson River School artists believed that nature in the form of the American landscape was an ineffable manifestation of God, though the artists varied in the depth of their religious conviction.

While the elements of the paintings are rendered very realistically, many of the actual scenes are the synthesized compositions of multiple scenes or natural images observed by the artists.

The artist Thomas Cole is generally acknowledged as the founder of the Hudson River School. Cole took a steamship up the Hudson in the autumn of 1825, the same year the Erie Canal opened, stopping first at West Point, then at Catskill landing where he ventured west high up into the eastern Catskill Mountains of New York State to paint the first landscapes of the area. Cole's close friend, Asher Durand, became a prominent figure in the school as well, particularly when the banknote-engraving business evaporated in the Panic of 1837. The second generation of Hudson River school artists emerged to prominence after Cole's premature death in 1848, including Cole's prize pupil Frederic Edwin Church, John Frederick Kensett, and Sanford Robinson Gifford. In addition to pursuing their art, many of the artists, including John Frederick Kensett, Sanford Gifford, and Frederic Edwin Church, were founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Most of the finest works of the Hudson River school were painted between 1855 and 1875. The epic size of the landscapes in these paintings reminded Americans of the vast, untamed, but magnificent wilderness areas in their country, and their works helped build upon movements to settle the American West, preserve national parks, and create city parks.

One of the largest collections of paintings by artists of the Hudson River School is at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Some of the most notable works in the Atheneum's collection are 13 landscapes by Thomas Cole, and 11 by Hartford native Frederic Edwin Church, both of whom were personal friends of the museum's founder, Daniel Wadsworth. Other important collections of Hudson River School art can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New-York Historical Society, both in New York City;

Selected artists working in the Hudson River School style

Albert Bierstadt Frederic Edwin Church Thomas Cole Jasper Francis Cropsey Thomas Doughty Robert Duncanson Asher Brown Durand Sanford Robinson Gifford James McDougal Hart William Hart Martin Johnson Heade Hermann Ottomar Herzog David Johnson John Frederick Kensett Homer Dodge Martin Jervis McEntee Thomas Moran Samuel F.B.