Hudson River School landscapes

Thomas Cole was the founder of the Hudson River School of artists. they were a group of landscape painters that painted with romanticism and focused on a certain area of the United States.

I remember going monthly to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and in my early years of discovering art was fascinated by four paintings in a small gallery, I could study them for hours. They were allegorical paintings by Thomas Cole from 1840, each painting showed a different stage of a man's life, childhood, youth, manhood and old age.
They were so interesting, and so well done, there an amazing amount of details that translated and changed from each painting to the final painting. There was a linked story to each painting, that in the final painting, like any good movie, the main character learns the true meaning of his life.





"The paintings follow a voyager who travels in a boat on a river through the mid-19th century American wilderness. In each painting, accompanied by a guardian angel, the voyager rides the boat on the River of Life. The landscape, corresponding to the seasons of the year, plays a major role in telling the story. In each picture, the boat's direction of travel is reversed from the previous picture. In childhood, the infant glides from a dark cave into a rich, green landscape. As a youth, the boy takes control of the boat and aims for a shining castle in the sky. In manhood, the adult relies on prayer and religious faith to sustain him through rough waters and a threatening landscape. Finally, the man becomes old and the angel guides him to heaven across the waters of eternity." from Wikipedia.





I didn't know who Thomas Cole was at the time, but these paintings and every amazing art museum in DC changed my life as far as art goes.






Now I know that Thomas Cole was a landscape painter with an amazing attention for detail.

I wrote the slideshow to show different aspects of landscape paintings in general using the Hudson River School artists as examples.

We learn about a horizon line, where the land or sea meets the sky.
Also, aerial perspective, foreground, middle ground and background. For example, the background is paler and sometimes fuzzier to show that it is the distance.
And then we have linear perspective , when artists give a feeling of distance by making lines meet at a "vanishing point".

Link to the slideshow: Hudson River School

Materials for project:
White background water color paper, heavier stock.
Blue painters tape
Water colors in spray bottles. ( hobby lobby carries magic liquid watercolor, the only store that I know that carries it, highly pigmented, it can be watered down and put in spray bottles.)
Sharpies
Salt





For the project, pass out the paper, and have the kids write their name on the back.
Then, give them stripes of the painters tape with instructions on how to make their trees and ground. The ground is one solid piece of tape and a ripped piece on top. Have them place their tree trunks where they want. 2 or 3. Then, they rip off little strips of tape to place down for the branches.






Next step is they spray 2 or 3 colors of the spray bottled watercolors onto the paper. Wile it is still wet, they sprinkle some salt on top.











When the paper dries, (you may need some blow dryer help if some of them are too wet) help them remove the tape. The final step is taking a sharpie and drawing the lines on the trees.












Links:
Voyage of life by Thomas Cole

Hudson River School