Hudson River School

American landscape painting came of age in the mid-19th century. Thomas Cole was the leader of the landscape painters and co-founded with Thomas Doughty the Hudson River School. Cole and his colleagues carefully recorded every aspect of nature, from the blazing sunset to the most humble plant, and were instrumental in creating a new lyrical spaciousness in landscape painting. Frederic Church, Martin Johnson Heade, and other members of the second generation of the Hudson River School (often referred to as the Luminists) added the glowing atmosphere, flickering light, and textural differentiations that so poetically describe the American experience of nature.