This classic historical overview of the Hudson River School helped spark renewed interest in the lives and works of artists Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Asher Durand, Sanford Gifford, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Cropsey, Worthington Whittredge, and other American landscape painters who created a new-and quintessentially American-style of art in the early and mid-19th century. Inspired first by the pastoral Hudson River Valley and the rugged wilderness of the Catskill Mountains, many of these artists then ventured forth to capture unspoiled scenes of the American West, New England, or South America.