[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

The Hudson Highlands is a lovely area and used t o attract landscape painters from Europe. I lived in the area for years and for two of them I could see them from my front window. New York State is a helpless captive of NYC.

[ETL]

The Hudson Highlands is a lovely area and used to attract landscape painters from Europe.

Yes, Upstate NY is a beautiful place (most of it at least).

"The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement by a group of landscape painters, whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism. Their paintings depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, as well as the Catskill Mountains, Adirondack Mountains, and White Mountains of New Hampshire. 'School', in this sense, refers to a group of people whose outlook, inspiration, output, or style demonstrates a common thread, rather than a learning institution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_School

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/hudsonriver.html

http://www.classicartrepro.com/artistsb.iml?artist=65

[ETL]

A painting which has become a virtual emblem for the Hudson River School is the dramatic 46" x 36" canvas by Asher B. Durand, KINDRED SPIRITS, which hangs in New York City's Public Library. In it Durand depicts himself, together with Cole, on a rocky promontory in serene contemplation of the scene before them: the gorge with its running stream, the gossamer Catskill mists shimmering in a palette of subtle colors, framed by foliage. In the foreground stands one of the school's famous symbols--a broken tree stump-- what Cole called a "memento mori" or reminder that life is fragile and impermanent; only Nature and the Divine within the Human Soul are eternal. Tiny as the human beings are in this composition, they are nevertheless elevated by the grandeur of the landscape in which they are in harmony. As Cole and Durand firmly believed, if the American landscape was a new Garden of Eden, then it was they, as artists, who kept the keys of entry.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/hudson.html