Customer Reviews

Hudson River School: The Landscape Art of Bierstadt, Cole, Church, Durand, Heade and twenty other artists

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This is not a giant book, but it certainly is a beautiful one, in which you'll find a decent helping of full-color plates that portray the majestic representation of idealized landscape painting that came to be known as the Hudson River School.

In an easily readable fourteen-page introduction, author Louise Minks takes us from about 1825, when the definition of this genre of landscape painting was beginning to form, to the last decades of the 19th Century, when the term "Hudson River School" came into vogue as a way of distancing the style from the emerging Barbizon School in France. Ms. Minks recounts the goings-on of the writers, patrons and artists which influenced many Hudson River School painters, such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Martin Heade, George Inness, Worthington Whittredge and Albert Bierstadt, to name a few. Twenty black-and-white illustrations (mostly photos of paintings and noteworthy people) appear along with the text.

The 80 color plates, about half of which extend to both pages of the open book, are arranged according to phases of the Hudson River School development: "Formative," "Mature," and "Expansionist." Each phase is introduced with a page-long synopsis of what was happening at the time the artwork on the following pages was created. As expected, Cole, Bierstadt and Church are the most represented (25 artists overall). Also, Ms. Minks made sure to include in the color plates the artwork that was most discussed in the introduction. The color printing is of excellent quality, as is the paper stock on which the artwork appears. Given the size of the pages, I found it easy to spend a long time admiring all that was going on in each painting.

The pictures in this book are positively breathtaking. It is mainly about the paintings and phases of the movement. The sharpness of the images in this book are amazing and make it much more pleasurable to look at. I loved it.

Louise Minks' 1999 "The Hudson River School" is a coffee table art book containing an excellent selection from a distinctively American genre, coupled with an informative narrative on the history of the movement.

The narrative covers the three standard phases of the Hudson River School, from Formative to Mature to Expansionist. The text is liberally illustrated with approximately 60 color plates, many full-size, and a variety of black and white illustrations and artists' portraits. The illustrations include the work of 25 artists, among others: Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Goerge Innes, and Worthington Whittredge.

"The Hudson River School" is very highly recommended to fans of HRS, who will find the text and illustrations worth lingering over, and to art students looking for a good introduction to HRS.

This is a great Hudson River School book and, considering its affordable price, far exceeds some others. I've shared this book with my daughter who enjoyed it as well. Highly recommended.

The book is in excellent condition, like new, the reproductions are beautifully done, color is great, the information given, while certainly not definitive, is quite adequate.
Thank you,

Sam Owens