"The site is the result of a careful study of the river-banks,
and commands so many views of varied beauty, that all the glories
of the Hudson may be said to circle it." H. W. French, Art and
Artists in Connecticut, 1879
In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his
name. The exhibition and its accompanying publication Glories of
the Hudson: Frederic Edwin Church's Views from Olana mark the
quadricentennial of his discovery by highlighting Frederic Church's
sketches of the prospect from his hilltop home overlooking the
river. Church made his first sketch of the Hudson River and
Catskill Mountains from Red Hill the south end of the property that
became his home, Olana in 1845, on a sketching expedition suggested
by his teacher Thomas Cole. Returning to the Hudson Valley in 1860
as the nation's most famous and best-paid artist, Church settled on
a farm on the lower slope of the Sienghenbergh, securing for
himself and his new wife a splendid vantage point for studying,
sketching, and painting the river.
Church continued to add land to his property, attaining new and
varied vistas of the river, and crowned the estate with a
Persian-inspired house designed to frame splendid views of the
Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. Church never tired of his
views of the river, documenting his passion for the Hudson in
paintings, oil sketches, and drawings. From Olana, he observed the
transformations wrought by the changing seasons, weather, and
light, capturing chilly winter snows, brilliant sunsets, and
passing storms in sketches executed with a few brushstrokes or
autumn colors and clear winter light in more finished easel
paintings. The best of these are reproduced here, in eighty-three
illustrations, sixty-nine in full color, some of them published for
the first time. The essay by Evelyn D. Trebilcock and Valerie A.
Balint, the introduction by Kenneth John Myers, and the foreword by
John K. Howat together provide an absorbing narrative of the
development of the Hudson River School and its most successful
artist.
The Olana Partnership, Hudson, New York, and New York State
Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Albany, New
York, organized Glories of the Hudson: Frederic Edwin Church's
Views from Olana, held from May 23 to October 12, 2009"
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