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Mission: The Hudson River School for Landscape will build a new movement of American art, modeling itself after the artistic, social and spiritual values of the Hudson River School painters. It will bring together the reawakening enthusiasm for the old American painters, the vigorous but unfocused scene of contemporary landscape painting and the urgent need for a renewed reverence for the land. By bringing back the skills and spirit of the pre-impressionist landscape painters the program will give much needed direction to a new generation of painters. As they learn to carefully study and reflect on the trees and clouds and blades of grass and cliffs, their paintings will become beautiful. Ideally, these artists and their beautiful representations of nature will help to lead the culture back to a stronger connection to the landscape. The school seeks to make a contribution both to the art world and the conservation movement.
The curriculum consists of three primary components: Field studies, theory, and studio painting.
The program will focus on constructing a large-scale studio landscape based on a number of carefully observed field studies. These are divided into three categories that combine to give the artist a complete picture of the surroundings. a) Pencil Drawing - The student will learn to research compositions through studied pencil drawings. As these linear drawings develop they will define each of the specific details and elements that will constitute the final studio painting. Additional pencil studies will begin to explore value with white chalk on toned paper.
b) Tonal Studies - The artist will work out large tonal organization in a series of ink wash drawings and monochrome oil studies. These will offer the opportunity to favor large value structure over detail, creating the relationships that will unify the large studio painting.
c) Plein Air Oil Sketches - Finally, the artist will begin to study color through small plein air oils in the tradition of the Hudson River School. Through a distance to foreground progression technique these studies will prefigure the large studio painting, informing spatial relationships through atmospheric color theory. Oil studies of individual parts of the whole can be combined in the studio to inform the final landscape painting with an authoritative understanding of the details.
2) Theory The program will include a series of lectures and discussions covering the more theoretical aspects of landscape painting. These will engage both art history and natural science. The instructors will discuss the methods and materials of the classical landscape painters. Composition will be taught by the analysis of reproductions of older paintings. Various compositional strategies will be covered as well as particular devices like repoussoir, receding tiers, and the use of diagonals to create depth. Linear and atmospheric perspective will be taught in theory and practice. Fundamental concepts of natural sciences such as botany, geology, optics and meteorology will be introduced. Proposed Lecture Topics - Hudson River Sketches; Botany; Geology in American Landscape Painting; Cole and Church; History and Influences of the Hudson River Landscape Painting; Materials and Methods of the Hudson River School Painters; Perspective Drawing in Landscape; Meteorology and Cloud Studies
The goal of the field studies and the theoretical investigations is the construction of a larger studio landscape. The landscape painters of the seventeenth century up through the Hudson River period made their paintings in this manner. The students will learn to synthesize their drawings and pleine air paintings with ideas about light and air and perspective and knowledge of the landscape. This combination of the empirical with the rational is fundamental to all classical art. Artistic principles of theme and composition and perspective will unify these works.
It is through extensive and real engagement that the artist learns to capture the spirit of the landscape. The many hundreds of hours spent out in the sun and the wind, scrupulously studying nature, transform the artist. It was by this experience that the old masters of the landscape realized their art. And it is how we hope to realize ours.
The Hudson River School for Landscape has facilities at the Sugar Maples Center for Arts and Education in the heart of the Catskill Region of New York State and is sponsored by the Catskill Mountain Foundation.
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