The Hudson River School, one of the United States’ first true artistic movements, grew out of the beauty of the Catskill Mountains. Yet much of the art used to characterize the period was painted by men.
A new exhibit at the Mountain Top Historical Society seeks to challenge this, showcasing female artists painting the Catskills in the past, present, and future.
On display on weekends through Monday, September 7, the exhibit in the historic Haines Falls train station off state Route 23A illuminates work by contemporary artists as well as the aspiring young artists of the Catskills.
The exhibit, curated by Carol Slutzky-Tenerowicz and Sheila Trautman, features paintings and prints of the mountains by women artists currently working in the Hudson River School tradition. The mid-19th century art movement had its origins in the panoramas of the Catskills, with early landscape work between 1825 to 1875 depicting the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area.
Looking toward the future is a showcase of artwork by female students from Hunter-Tannersville Central School and Catskill Middle and High School. The display is curated by the schools’ respective art teachers: Ritamary Vining of Hunter-Tannersville Middle and High School and Carli Gazoorian of Catskill Middle and High School.
The exhibit’s historic component was brought to life at its opening on Saturday, July 25, as Amanda Malmstrom, associate curator at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, spoke about the role women artists played in the Hudson River School.
Cole, born in England in 1801, is generally credited with the movement’s founding after he took a steamboat up the Hudson River in late 1825. After his arrival in Greene County, he painted some of the first landscapes of the eastern Catskills after hiking through the area.
A second generation emerged after Cole’s death in 1848, among them John Frederick Kensett and Sanford Robinson Gifford. Frederic Edwin Church, the only pupil Cole ever took on, studied with him in Catskill from 1844 to 1846. Church’s home, Olana, in the Columbia County town of Greenport, is now a state historic site.
But Malmstrom said the movement is more than the male artists who define it in textbooks and museums.
“I started compiling a list of any reference in a catalog, anything I could find in auctions, looking at archives, and I could kind of piece together the names of around 50 women who painted in the Hudson River School,” she said. “We know that they were there.”
One artist Malmstrom spoke about was Harriet Cany Peale, born in Philadelphia in 1799. She studied with and later married painter Rembrandt Peale.
Malmstrom specifically cited an 1858 painting by Peale of the Kaaterskill Clove, currently located at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut.
“Peale’s painting feels very photographic to me,” she said. “You can see the hazy mountains. You can feel the humidity.”
Another artist highlighted by Malmstrom was Susie Barstow, born in 1836 in New York City. Barstow’s work was relatively obscure until historians began to properly research female artists in the Hudson River School tradition.
“She was one of the most prolific veteran hikers,” Malmstrom said. “In this magazine called the White Mountain Echo, it was written about Susie that she would be known to hike 25 miles a day, even in the midst of a blinding snowstorm.”
In the present day, Malmstrom said she feels a connection with female artists of the past when she goes to the locations they painted.
“There’s something so powerful about being where Harriet stood just under 200 years ago and also saw the beauty of this place and captured it on a canvas,” she said.
Gazoorian said she felt women still faced significant challenges in the art world.
“Women are riding on the fumes and smoke sometimes of what the men are deciding is the style of the time,” she said. “We’re kind of always being infiltrated with imagery that is being directed probably mostly by men.”
But in the face of those challenges, she said it was a profound moment to host an exhibit featuring only the work of women.
“This is amazing,” she said. “Especially to have a community that works together to put it up.”
Connor Greco is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Windham, Hunter, and surrounding Greene County communities. Send correspondence to connor@theoverlooknews.com.
