Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909

by David Schuyler

The Hudson River Valley was the first iconic American landscape. Beginning as early as the 1820s, artists and writers found new ways of thinking about the human relationship with the natural world along the Hudson. Here, amid the most dramatic river and mountain scenery in the eastern United States, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper created a distinctly American literature, grounded in folklore and history, that contributed to the emergence of a sense of place in the valley. Painters, led by Thomas Cole, founded the Hudson River School, widely recognized as the first truly national style of art. As the century advanced and as landscape and history became increasingly intertwined in the national consciousness, an aesthetic identity took shape in the region through literature, art, memory, and folklore―even gardens and domestic architecture. In Sanctified Landscape, David Schuyler recounts this story of America’s idealization of the Hudson Valley during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Schuyler’s story unfolds during a time of great change in American history. At the very moment when artists and writers were exploring the aesthetic potential of the Hudson Valley, the transportation revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism were transforming the region. The first generation of American tourists traveled from New York City to Cozzens Hotel and the Catskill Mountain House in search of the picturesque. Those who could afford to live some distance from jobs in the city built suburban homes or country estates. Given these momentous changes, it is not surprising that historic preservation emerged in the Hudson Valley: the first building in the United States preserved for its historic significance is Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh. Schuyler also finds the seeds of the modern environmental movement in the transformation of the Hudson Valley landscape. Richly illustrated and compellingly written, Sanctified Landscape makes for rewarding reading. Schuyler expertly ties local history to national developments, revealing why the Hudson River Valley was so important to nineteenth-century Americans―and why it is still beloved today.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 27, 2012

Reviews

[Arvind Balasundaram · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this multidisciplinary study, author David Schuyler presents a fascinating account of Hudson valley life and lore, and how the time period 1820-1909 was crucial in shaping ideologies about aesthetics, history, literature, the environment, preservation and heritage in general. Caught in a period of rapid industrialization, spawned by the development of the railroad and canal networks, the valley’s towns and wilderness persisted in a state of tension between forward progress and historic nostalgia, particularly as it related to the birth and central idea of the American Republic. By providing vignettes into the period’s personalities (notable artists like Cole and McEntee), the naturalist John Burroughs, the writer Washington Irving, and the arborist/architect Downing, Schuyler brings out how each represented in their own way the uniqueness of the river and its local traditions and culture. In so doing, an American aesthetic and literary tradition was also born (for example, the Hudson River School) and the legend of Knickerbocker, Ichabod Crane, and Rip van Winkle). Increasing industrialization driving north from New York City created little towns and mini cities in the Valley (such as Newburgh, Kingston, and Poughkeepsie), while the growing taste for art by European Masters eventually led to the demise of the Hudson River School. Through it all, the community organized and mobilized, and pushed through major legislation to protect this wilderness - the establishment of the Palisades Interstate Parkway, Storm King, George Washington’s quarters in Newburgh, preservation of Stony and Verplaank points represent great victories that helped preserve some of the wild in Hudson’s river for posterity.
This is a book written with verve and passion, and fondness for this very picturesque region. It tells the story as experienced by its most famous residents, and leaves the reader fully in love with the enchanting geography and role on both sides of the Hudson River….

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schuyler traces conceptions of the Hudson Valley as a historic and picturesque landscape from early American literary tourism -which highlighted the landscapes of Washington Irving and James Fennimore Cooper's fiction - to the popularized aesthetic theories of Alan Jackson Downing and author Nathaniel Parker Willis, to antebellum interest in the historical locations of the American Revolution, and late century preservation movements. This study shows how literary invention, historical imagination, and artistic depiction can shape the identity of a region and decisions about what is preserved and what is not. The author further links the shaping of the regional identity to a greater American identity.

[Kathy Gardner]

One of our art gallery book clubs chose this as our book of the month and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the early artists of the Hudson River Valley. David Schuyler brought in many examples of the architecture of the homes of writers and poets as well as the architects and landscape architects of this time. There were so many common problems they faced that we still must deal with today. The industrialization and commercialization of nature and what happens when businesses dig and build. The book included many lovely photos and paintings of historical importance.