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HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL & PALENVILLE

Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, Kensett, Richards and all the other landscape artists of the 19th century flocked to the escarpment of the Catskill Mountains and its famous Kaaterskill Clove. One has only to look through the catalogs of their works to find reference to Palenville and the special place it held for them.

It all started with Cole's first voyage up the Hudson River in 1925. From the pile of sketches and studies of that autumn expedition into the wilderness came several finished paintings, which upon being viewed by Col. John Trumbull, then president of the American Academy of Fine Arts, were recognized immediately for being the work of an inspired artist. Within hours of their first being seen, the three paintings displayed were bought and Cole's life would never be the same. Or would landscape painting in America be pushed to the side behind the portrait and historical painters.

In one swift moment of time, American landscape painting was hurdled to the forefront; the wilderness, in all its' splendor took hold of painters and writers alike and became the prima mater of our Romantic era. A school of landscape painters grow, for with each passing year painters added their names to the list of visitors to its birthplace. Although the breath of subject matter for these artists spanned continents, they are immortalized to us as, The Hudson River School of American Landscape Painters, reference to their beginnings and because of the numbers of painters that worked within the Hudson Valley during that run of American art history.

Palenville, which borders the southern entrance to the Kaaterskill Clove, became known as the famous gathering place of painters and is today considered America's First Art Colony. From this little hamlet the painters would go off and find the abundance of subject matter that became the symbol for the cult of the wilderness, as it was sometimes known. By the mid-1840's it was thought to be, "the Catskills first year-round art colony". Palenville, besides being known for the many motifs of 19th century painters is also the legendary home of Rip Van Winkle; within our own period of time it has been home to: inventors, composers, poets, writers, photographers, song-writers, singers, actresses, designers and continues to attract painters - not all of whom are interested in the landscape approach.

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