Hudson River School | Famous Locales

The Hudson River, originating high in the Adirondack Mountains and flowing over a course of 315 miles to the sea, was an important strategic, military, and commercial waterway used by the Native Americans, Dutch, and finally the British before the American Revolution. The river and its varied surrounding territories were long associated with the nation’s historical roots. Artistic interpretations of the landscape were vital to an emerging national identity, in which its citizens enjoyed a close and even sacred relationship with the land. Many iconic locales, including the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White Mountains, became meeting points and catalysts for numerous artistic associations and schools of painting and literature in the nineteenth century. Artists also roamed the eastern coastline painting coastal and marine views. After 1850, the Hudson River School ventured further afield, seeking inspiration in the wilderness as far out west as Yellowstone and Yosemite, in the Arctic, the Andes, and the tropics of Central and South America.

The Hudson River

Storm King
The Palisades
West Point
Hudson Highlands

Hudson River School Art Trail

The Art Trail

The Adirondacks

Lake George
Whiteface Mountain

The Catskills

Kaaterskill Falls
Kaaterskill Clove
Fawn’s Leap
North-South Lake
Artist’s Rock
Catskill Mountain House

New England

Newport and Narragansett Beach, Rhode Island
The Berkshires
The White Mountains

The American West

Introduction
Yellowstone
Yosemite