Visit to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

I recently made my second visit to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to visit the Hudson River School exhibition.  Unfortunately, photography of any kind was prohibited in the exhibition so I was unable to take a picture of myself in the exhibition.  Instead, I've uploaded a picture of my ticket stubs from the day of my visit.  As noted in the guide book the Hudson River and the dramatic sites and scenery along its shores were popular with tourists, and inspired a group of American landscape painters who came to be known as the Hudson River School.  These artists depicted the natural, unspoiled beauty of America. Along with the artwork displayed, several quotes and summaries of the Hudson School and Hudson School artists were displayed throughout the exhibit.  For instance a summary of the exhibition that best describes the Hudson River School of thought goes as follows:

            Although the term "picturesque" has a long history encompassing multiple definitions, in the late       eighteenth century theorists regarded it as incorporating aspects of both the sublime and the beautiful roughness and smoothness, gradual and sudden variation, symmetry and asymmetry, freshness and decay.  Artists of the Hudson River school emphasized this combination of forms, texture and compositions symmetry in their paintings.  For mid-nineteenth century American artists, the picturesque became the dominant mode for ordering their landscape paintings.

 "The Hudson for natural magnificence is unmatched" -Thomas Cole 1836.

"Go not abroad then in search of material for exercise of your pencil, while the virgin charms of your native land have claims on your deepest affection"  -Ashur B. Durand 1855


         The five pieces of art that I've chosen represent the broad spectrum of the Hudson school from the caves in Kentucky to the grandeur of Niagara falls across the vast landscape of Yosemite Valley and finally the desolute beauty of the ruined city of Ostia.  Of all the pieces of art in the exhibition, the following paintings are the ones that stood out to me the most.

"Mammoth Cave Kentucky" 1843, Marie-Francois-Regis Gignoux, Oil on Canvas

Description:  After training at the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Gignoux immigrated to the United States where he soon established himself as a landscape specialist.  He was drawn  to a vast underground system of corridors and chambers in Kentucky know as Mammoth Cave.  The site portrayed has been identified as the Rotunda-so named because its grand, uninterrupted interior space recalls that of the Pantheon in Rome.  Gignoux created a romantic image rooted in face and emotion.  In contrast to the bright daylight glimpsed through the cavern mouth, the blazing fire impresses a hellish vision that contemporaneous viewers may have associated with the manufacture of gunpowder made from the bat guano harvested and rendered in vats in that very space since the War of 1812.

"The Solitary Oak" 1844, Asher Brown Durand, Oil on Canvas

Description:  Durand's tour of European art capitals from 1840-41 resulted in considerable modification of his artistic outlook.  the low horizon luminous atmosphere, and cattle subject of The Solitary Oak demonstrate Durands's admiration for the landscapes of the Dutch painter Aelbert Cuyp.  The painting commanded significant attention when it was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1844.  As one critic wrote, "It has that glow of sunlight which it is so difficult to express.  A veteran tree, standing alone upon a gentle eminence, stretching forth its great arms, that have withstood the storms of centuries, is truly a noble subject for an artist of Mr. Durands's reputation...."

"Niagara Falls" 1818, Louisa Davis Minot, Oil on Linen

Description:  Niagara Falls straddles the border between New York State and Canada.  Tourist travel to the falls expanded after the 1825 completion of the Erie Canal, but their fame was so great that a number of artists had made the trek long before, including Louisa Davis Minot who produced an impressive pair of landscape painting in 1818.  Her composition compressed a vista of the American and Horseshoe falls under threatening skies, conveying the disorienting scale of the mammoth cataracts and exploiting a sense of awe and even fear at the overwhelming power of nature.  While Alvan Fisher, whose painting presents a view of Niagara Falls domesticated by the presence of well-dressed touring parties, Minot exploits an aesthetic experience known as the sublime, meant to stimulate a sense of awe and even fear at the overwhelming power of nature on a grand scale.

"View of the Yosemite Valley" 1865, Thomas Hill, Oil on Canvas

Description:  Hill firs saw the panoramic vistas of California's Yosemite Valley in 1862, an experience that led to his reputation as the "most ardent devotee at the shrine of Yosemite and the most faithful priest of the valley."  Shown at the National Academy of Design in 1866, View of the Yosemite Valley not only conjured for New Yorkers the grandeur of Yosemite but also confirmed that the area was already tamed by tourism (as indicated by the couple on horseback at the center of the composition).

And last but not least my favorite painting from the exhibition:

"Castle of Ostia Seen from the Pine Forest of Castel Fusano" 1881, William Stanley Haseltine, Oil on Canvas

Description:  Haseltine lived in Rome in the 1870s and 1880s.  This panoramic view of the Castle of Ostia rising above the distant horizon carries the eye from the hushed, darkened foreground into the golden brilliance of the setting sun.  An almost oppressive stillness evokes the history of the site itself- a dead city whose ruins were silent reminders of a once vital ancient civilization.  It was perhaps this painting that elicited the following response by a nineteenth-centurey visitor to Haseltine's studio:  "A large picture of Ostia attracted our attention by the sense of desolation and picturesque death that hovers about it......"