The Making of the Hudson River School: More than the Eye Beholds

Recognized as America’s first distinctive school of art, the Hudson River School of landscape painting emerged, evolved, and declined during a fifty-year period between 1825 and about 1875. Although not a formal school, the Hudson River School consisted of a group of closely connected artists who lived and worked in the Hudson Valley and who turned to the American landscape as a source of inspiration and subject matter.

The exhibition More than the Eye Beholds examines the American landscape and the making of the Hudson River School through selected topics that bring together significant paintings and drawings from such well-known artists as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, and others. The works of engravers and photographers, printers and publishers, surveyors and scientists will accompany the Hudson River School paintings and drawings to broaden the historical narrative of America’s first school of art.

More than the Eye Beholds includes works from the Albany Institute’s collection of Hudson River School paintings and drawings along with works from several private collections that have not been shown before in a public exhibition.