My sister Betty suggested a painting by Frederic Church or one of the other works of the The Hudson River School in my search for the Great American Painting. Rightly so, these wildly romantic painters known as the Hudson River School worshipped nature in the drama of the American landscape. Like their contemporaries, the great 19th century American writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, these artists inspired the early conservation movement in America.
Twilight Wilderness by Frederic Church, Oil on Canvas, 1860
"Some paintings seem to bear their nationality on their faces.
Church's Twilight in the Wilderness could only, I feel, be American.
Church specialized in works of sheer vastness of the American continent."
