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Frederic edwin church autumn8/14/2023 Landscape painting was especially suited for the propagation of such artistic ideals and spurred many Americans who studied art in Germany on to plein air painting - the Hudson River "School" most notably - when these students returned to America. In reaction to "realist" philosophers (Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, et al, e.g.) who were trying to "tell it as it is", some artists chose to buy into the new party-line to produce "art" that reflected a "fallen" world and turned out angst-driven, politically-motivated, or simply nonsensical work (if the world is a crappy place why not let art proclaim it?) while others retreated into a dream world of nature where beauty and mystery dwelt from a realism that morphed into the sublime (accentuated, incidentally, in the title of John Wilmerding's essay as well as for the title of the catalogue for the exhibit at Olana, viz., Maine Sublime) which inspired awe (even fear).Īlbert Bierstadt Mt. Like Church, and indeed so many of the Hudson River "school" beginning with Thomas Cole, Bierstadt (who in fact studied in Düsseldorf) was deeply influenced by the Romantic mysticism that grew up in Germany in direct response to the expressionist/abstract "movements" that were popping up over most of Europe. I began my own viewing at the Cole house, once again tearing myself from the mountain vista so dramatically visible from his spacious front porch (I've been there several times in the past, loving to linger there each time), to go inside to view the Bierstadt paintings. Both Bierstadt and Church brought representational art to its nth degree, both reaching a zenith of perfection that most probably had within its very precision of detail its own eventual downfall written in indelible paint. I'm sure that even the most cursory glance at the current exhibitions mounted at the Cole and Church homes - built, incidentally, right smack in the middle of their Catskill 'stomping grounds' - would cause many of today's viewers to wonder at their erstwhile neglect.Īlthough a modest showing - about a dozen paintings that focus on Bierstadt's time in the New York/New England areas at Cole's (supplemented with artifacts, memorabilia and drawings), ten paintings centered in Maine and a handful of drawings at Church's - and mostly comparatively smaller works than either Bierstadt or Church were made justly famous for (so large, in fact, that most New York City galleries could not easily accommodate them, causing the artists to find venues ((such as the large walls of the once popular Delmonico's Restaurant, for example)) that would do justice to them) - both exhibits are more than adequate to give the viewer enough of a "taste" to evaluate their technical genius in depicting landscape. 1825-1870), purported to be "fathered" by Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and so majestically exemplified in the work of Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Church (1826-1900), was once an epithet of disapprobation haughtily pronounced by many of the major "studio painters" of New York City on their fellow plein airistes who chose to go off into the mountains and stomp around the woods looking for motifs - perhaps even harder to believe that even though those woods-stompers eventually became beloved, themselves eventually building studios that rivaled their former detractors - even revered during the 1960's by the fickle artworld - that they would sink into near oblivion in the so-called "modern" era. HARD TO BELIEVE that the "Hudson River School" (ca. Art Review: Albert Bierstadt* at the Cole House, Frederic Edwin Church** at OlanaĪlbert Bierstadt Autumn View in Waterville,
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