Born, Wolfgang: American landscape painting: an interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948)

tem of which was yet to be developed.
The opening of canals, among which the
Erie in 1825 was notable, added new oc-
casions for this leisurely type of journey-
ing which brought the traveler in close
contact with nature. Some of the skippers,
we are told, carried organs on board and
on clear evenings the passengers enjoyed
music and moonlight as the boat slipped
through a rugged gorge—a truly roman-
tic experience in an America which was so
often derided for its prosaic style of life.
No less a traveler than Dickens testified
to the charm of his trips on America’s
canal boats.

Of all American rivers the Hudson was
the first and most important traffic artery
before the opening of the Mississippi for
navigation. The scenic beauty of its
shores impressed itself on the early travel-
ers, and thus a demand developed for
adequate pictorial representation of the
Hudson River Valley. An Irish-born land-
scape painter, William G. Wall (1792-
1885), published, about 1824, a port-
folio *° containing twenty views of the
Hudson River in aquatint. This portfolio
was a great success. The prints, colored in
soft broken tints among which bluish
tones were predominant, combined top-
ographical accuracy with an almost
tender feeling for the landscape. This
tenderness is even more obvious in the
water colors that served as models for the
etcher (Fig. 23).

Thomas Doughty was the oldest of the
landscape painters who explored the pic-
torial charms of the Hudson River Valley
without adopting the limitations which
the topographical view imposed. Born in
Philadelphia in 1793, Doughty began his
adult life as a businessman but in 1820
abandoned his profession in favor of
landscape painting—an audacious un-
dertaking at a time when the market

for landscapes was restricted more or less
to an accurate representation of country
seats commissioned by their affluent own-
ers.

Doughty, however, was successful. He
came at the right moment. The public
had been prepared by the engraved
views for the appreciation of landscape.
The romantic writers popularized Ameri-
can scenery by their descriptions.
Doughty himself exhibited paintings il-
lustrating James Fenimore Cooper’s Pio-
neers. Washington Irvings guaint
Hudson stories were interpreted by the
gifted narrative painter John Quidor in
pictures in which the landscape, though
not the main thing, played a not incon-
siderable role. The intense pride in their
country which was a common and some-
times noisily expressed characteristic of
the Americans of this generation mani-
fested itself in the best minds as aesthetic
enthusiasm for American nature and its
artistic interpretation. An harmonious re-
lationship between the artist and his
public developed that lasted for several
decades—roughly speaking, until the
time of the Civil War.

Doughty did not restrict himself to the
Hudson River Valley in the selection of
motifs, and he was not even the first to
paint there, but his name is firmly linked
with the origin and the development of
the Hudson River school.'” The term was
coined by a critic in the New York Tri-
bune to characterize this group of
painters as presumptuous provincials.
Gradually, however, the derogatory nick-
name became the generally accepted
designation for the leading movement
in American landscape painting during
the middle of the nineteenth century. A
similar thing happened in France with
the term “impressionism” which was first
used by a newspaperman as an abusive