Tag: landscape

Historic Hudson Homes: Cedar Grove & Olana

Historic Hudson Homes: Cedar Grove & Olana

This is part of a series on Historic Hudson Homes. For the other posts, see below:

Before the advent of “modern art” in the 20th century, the United States was considered something of a backwater as far as painting was concerned. Any American painter with an ounce of ambition had to travel to Paris and spend time copying masterpieces in the Louvre in order to become respectable.

This is precisely what Samuel Morse did. For two years he worked on what was supposed to be his masterpiece, The Gallery of the Louvre, in which he painstakingly reproduced several European masterworks in miniature. This technical tour de force, proof of his hard-earned artistic prowess, earned him—well, very little, which is why he quit painting thereafter and went into the telegraph business. Thus the eponymous code.

Of the American artists who did achieve success during this time, such as Mary Cassat, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeil Whistler, they all spent formative years in Paris and worked in thoroughly European modes.

But one school of genuinely American painting emerged in the 19th century which owed relatively little to the Old World. This was the Hudson River School. This consisted of grand, sweeping landscapes, capturing the relatively (to Europe) wild and untouched countryside. And though artists in this school would eventually paint all over the United States—and beyond—it is named for the place it began: the Hudson Valley.

It took a foreigner to see the beauty in the American landscape, and the potential to turn it into a new sort of painting. Having grown up in grimy, gritty England—in the throes of the industrial revolution—and moved to the United States as a young man, Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848) was deeply impressed by the endless green hills of the Hudson Valley.

Cole arrived in Catskill, New York, in his early 30s, and rented a room in Cedar Grove, the home of the Thomsons, a prosperous local family. A few years later he married Maria Bartow, a niece of the paterfamilias, and made the house his permanent home. What is now the Thomas Cole National Historic Site is, therefore, the ancestral Thomson residence.

The main house is a beautiful building in the Federal-style, constructed in the early days of the nation, with a lovely porch that wraps around the front. The view from the porch is, indeed, worthy of a picture, with the green-blue profile of the Catskills rolling in the distance. It is not difficult to see why the painter chose to live here. While the Catskills lack the dramatic rocky ridges of the great European mountain chains, the soft, undulating green carpet seems to embody the gentleness of nature. 

Due to a navigation error, my mother and I arrived late for the “Deep Dive” tour of the house. Still, we got plenty of information. The house is well-conserved and presented. There are reproductions of many of Cole’s letters and journal entries scattered about, as well as several original paintings. The majority of Cole’s paintings portray rugged landscapes where small figures are dwarfed by nature, though at times he included wild architectural fancies, such as a blue pyramid in The Architect’s Dream.

Upstairs, the museum has the last painting that Cole ever worked on, still unfinished. A cloudy blue sky hovers over a featureless brown landscape, revealing the painter’s process—painting from top to bottom. The only clue as to what he intended to paint below are two figures holding a cross, scratched roughly into the paint. Yet still more eye-catching is his Diagram of Contrasts, a color wheel painted over a black background, which looks startling like a work of contemporary abstract art. Indeed, Cole’s description of the work in his diary is reminiscent of Kandinsky:

It is what may be called the music of colours. I believe that colours are capable of affecting the mind, by combination, degree, and arrangement, like sound.

My favorite part of the visit was a video in Thomas Cole’s original studio (a room which he hated, since its only light source was a window facing north). Using his diaries, the museum recreated a hike that he took in the Catskills, juxtaposing his sketches and paintings with photos of the scene now. Cole’s final product may not compare favorably with, say, The Last Supper; but it would never have occurred to that Italian genius—or, indeed, to any major European painter up to this time—to use hiking as a basis of artistic inspiration. It was a major innovation.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site includes not only the main house, but several other buildings on the property. There is the visitor center, of course, and also two buildings that Cole designed himself: the Old and the New Studios. The Old Studio—which Cole used for the most productive years of his life—is little more than an adjunct to an old barn, with extra windows for good lighting. The New Studio was wholly designed by Cole, but was demolished in the 70s. It has since been reconstructed according to his design and now serves as an art gallery.

Thomas Cole died young, at the age of 47. But the movement he founded culminated in the work of his star pupil, Frederic Edwin Church (1826 – 1900). As a young artist, Church was a frequent visitor to Cole’s home; and it is easy to picture the young artist admiring the green hillside on the other side of the Hudson. After achieving both fame and wealth far beyond anything Cole could have dreamed of, Church bought himself a huge estate, and erected one of the most startling buildings in the Hudson Valley: Olana.

This property can be spotted from Cedar Grove, as a red dot among the green hills. Indeed, as of 2018, visitors can even walk from Cedar Grove to Olana, thanks to a pedestrian walkway that was affixed to the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. I walked part of the way and recommend the experience, if only for the wonderful views of the river and the Catskills beyond.

Olana amid the hills, seen from across the river, with the Rip Van Winkle Bridge to the left.
Here is the reverse view, from the porch of Olana.

(Curious motorists may notice that the road from the bridge curves somewhat awkwardly on the western side. This was precisely to avoid disturbing Thomas Cole’s historic residence.)

Olana presents a startling vision to the new visitor. You see, Church was a remarkably well-traveled man, especially considering that he lived before the age of air-travel. He designed Olana—in collaboration with famed architect, Calvert Vaux—after returning from the Middle East, basing both the design and the name on Persian models. (In this, he resembles an earlier Hudson Valley resident, Washington Irving, who built his Sunnyside after returning from Spain.)

Historically, painting has been a poorly remunerated profession. Van Gogh famously died penniless, but even the great Rembrandt was considered as little more than skilled craftsman. Of course, most aspiring painters still carry the cross of poverty; but in the 20th century it became at least possible for the most successful artists to become independently wealthy.

So how was Church able to afford such an ostentatious house on one of the most attractive bluffs overlooking the Hudson Valley? This was partly the result of an innovative business practice. In addition to having wealthy patrons who supported him and bought his work—the life-blood of artists for centuries—Church hit upon the idea of touring with his paintings. That is, he sold admission to his works, which would be exhibited in well-lit rooms complete with benches, from which the eager audience could view the painting with opera glasses. At the time, it must have been like a trip to the movies.

This idea worked because of how and what Church painted. Like his mentor, Cole, Church was primarily a landscape painter; but he worked on a grander scale—painting enormous canvasses that could occupy the entire wall—and traveled to far more “exotic” landscapes.

His most famous painting, In the Heart of the Andes, is an excellent example. Inspired by the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Church traveled to a land where few Westerners had dared to go, and took painstaking care to accurately capture it all on his canvass—from plant species to climate zones. At a time before color photography, when long-distance travel was inaccessible to the vast majority, the painting must have been a startling window into a distant, alien world. It was a David Attenborough documentary for the 19th century. (You can see this enormous canvass in the Met, where it still may steal your breath.)

The house at Olana unites Church’s dominant interests: landscape, art, and travel. The many arched windows open out onto views of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills that are, indeed, worthy of a painting. And in addition to the house’s odd profile—a kind of Victorian imitation of Persian design, altered to suit a cold climate—it is further distinguished by the many stenciled designs that run along the walls, inside and out. Church designed these stencils himself; and along with striped awnings and colorful roof tiles, they serve to give the house a visual flair quite foreign to most American mansions.

The furnishing of the house reflects Church’s wide travels, as various knicknacks from Mexico and the Middle East are scattered among the elegant furniture. But the main thing the visitor sees are paintings. There are dozens of them—not only by Church, but also Cole and other artist acquaintances. The vast majority of these are landscapes, which again demonstrate both his immaculate technique and his wide travels. Compared to Cole’s more staid style, Church is a cinematic painter, whose landscapes transport you into another world. I would certainly have paid admission to see one.

In addition to Church’s home, the visitor can enjoy his estate, which must be one of the most attractive pieces of property in the entire Hudson Valley. But as it happened, we had to go west on the day we visited; so instead of strolling on the carriage roads, we got in the car and headed to a site on the Hudson River Art Trail: Kaaterskill Falls.

The name of this waterfall—like the name of the Catskills themselves—comes from “cat” (as in bobcat, which presumably were more common in earlier times) and “kill,” an old Dutch term for a stream. Indeed, throughout New York, the curious visitor will find many streams bearing ominous names, like the Sing Sing Kill or Beaverkill.

The falls are magnificent. A stream of water plunges down over 200 feet from a sheer cliff, making them taller than Niagara Falls, if orders of magnitude less powerful. It was largely thanks to Thomas Cole that the falls became a popular tourist attraction in the early United States, who was the first of many to popularize the cascade in paintings. On the day we visited, there were people swimming in the murky pool below, while dozens looked on, awestruck. It is easy to see how Cole was inspired to start a new artistic movement by this landscape.

Thomas Cole’s rendering of the falls.

Letters from Spain #9: The Spanish Landscape

Letters from Spain #9: The Spanish Landscape

Here is the next episode of my podcast about life in Spain:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/letters-from-spain-9-the-spanish-landscape/id1469809686?i=1000459409868

For the transcript, see below:

Hello.

We have had another long weekend here in Spain, and this one was for the Day of the Constitution. It commemorates the day in 1978 when the constitution was passed into law via a referendum. We also had Monday, December 9th, off. And this was basically just because the government guarantees a certain number of holidays per year, and organizes them to make as many long weekends as possible. I quite like this aspect of Spain.

Like so many people (judging from the traffic), I took the opportunity to leave Madrid and to go visit another part of Spain. And while I travelled, I was reminded, once again, of how amazingly diverse the Spanish landscape can be. So I thought I would take this opportunity to give you a kind of quick overview of Spain’s geography.

We can begin with Madrid and its surroundings. Now, I am sorry to say that I think this is one of the ugliest parts of Spain. Madrid is a kind of bureaucratic capital. The site of the city was chosen because it is in the middle of the country. There really isn’t any geographical reason a city should be here. The soil is dry and sandy and isn’t good for farming. There is no coast and no navigable river. (Madrid’s river, the Manzanares, is a kind of pathetic trickle most of the year.) Basically, if the city were to disappear completely, the thought of founding a city here would probably never even occur to anyone (well, unless you were a bureaucrat). 

I mostly like Madrid’s climate, if only because it rarely rains. The air is so dry that it hardly holds any heat. This is weird for a New Yorker, used to humidity. The temperature can vary quite a lot from morning to evening, and can even change drastically between sun and shade. All this is because Madrid is at a relatively high altitude—in fact, it is the highest altitude capital in Europe—and the air is sort of thin. Besides that, a whole mountain chain to the north shields the city from any weather making its way from the coast. As a result, it’s dry and pretty barren.

Here is what Ernest Hemingway had to say about Madrid:

“Madrid is a mountain city with a mountain climate. It has the high cloudless Spanish sky that makes the Italian sky seem sentimental and it has air that is actively pleasurable to breathe. The heat and the cold come and go quickly there.”

I can attest to the air being pleasurable to breathe. At the very least, I feel invigorated when I go running here.

If Madrid itself has an unremarkable landscape, it is fortunately close to some beautiful areas. Most notably there are the Guadarrama mountains to the north. For a New Yorker like me, seeing any mountains is an exciting experience. The highest point in all of New York state is Mount Marcy, which is 1,600 meters tall. And this is in the Adirondacks, pretty far from where I live. The tallest peak fairly close to my house is Mount Beacon, which is 491 meters tall. The whole city of Madrid is higher than that!

The highest peak in Madrid’s mountain range is called Peñalara, and it is about 2,400 meters above sea level. That’s just high enough so that you might experience altitude sickness, though the risk is very small. I’ve climbed to the top many times. It’s fantastic both in winter, when it’s covered in snow and skiers, and in summer, when the view is magnificent. This, by the way, is one of Spain’s 15 national parks. So far, I’ve only visited six of them.

Now that I am on the subject, though, let me tell you about two more national parks that I’ve visited recently. One is in the province of Extremadura. This province is now known as the poorest area of Spain. Ironically, however, it was one of the richest parts of the peninsula when the Romans were here, as we can see from the many Roman ruins. Nowadays, much of Extremadura is given over to raising the Iberian pigs which produce some of the country’s finest hams. The pigs are fed a diet of acorns from a little shrubby tree called the holm oak, which grows in abundance in Extremadura. 

Anyways, the national park is called Monfragüe. It occupies part of the Tagus river valley, where a huge rock formation called the Salto del Gitano created a strong updraft that birds really like. As a result, on any given day you can see dozens and dozens of the indigenous vultures hovering overhead. I highly recommend it.

Just this last weekend I saw another national park, the Picos de Europa (or the “peaks of Europe”). This is a mountain range in the north of Spain (it occupies the borders of three provinces), which gets its name for being the first bits of land that sailors from the New World could see on their return to Europe. Personally, I doubt this story is true, since the Picos de Europa aren’t especially close to the Atlantic, and they aren’t the tallest mountains on the peninsula. Regardless, they are absolutely gorgeous. You could easily imagine yourself in the Swiss alps.

I like these national parks partly because they are not the sorts of things people normally associate with Spain. The popular image of the country is of the beach, the hot sun, orange trees, palm trees, and olive trees. And of course you can find all that in Spain, too. Spain has great beaches, and great palm trees. But arguably Spain’s most important geographic characteristic is that it is so mountainous. In fact, Spain is the second most mountainous country in Europe, after Switzerland, with an average elevation of about 600 meters (or 2,000 feet). Mountain chains crisscross the country. Besides the two mountain chains I already mentioned, there are the Pyrenees on the border with France, and the Sierra Nevada in Andalucia, which is the tallest range in the peninsula (there are many mountains well over 3,000 meters, or 10,000 feet tall!).

These mountains have played an extremely important role in Spain’s history, both for their effect on transport and the climate. To state the obvious, mountains can get in the way of travel, and this has contributed to the political and cultural disunity of Spain. Historically, it wasn’t so easy to get around. Even more important, the many changes in elevation—mountains, plateaus, and river valleys—can create lots of little micro-climates, and this has an important effect on the culture. I’ll illustrate this with a comparison.

Andalusia, which is in the south of the country, is fairly flat and low-lying, with lots of sun and good soil. As a consequence, farmers can gather lots of land together under one owner, and then farm it with a team of professional planters and pickers for added efficiency. Historically, this led to a great deal of inequality, since the wealthy would buy up the land, and the poor would be forced to work as itinerant laborers. By contrast, consider Galicia. This is the area on the northwestern tip of Spain, right above Portugal. Much like New York, Galicia is hilly rather than mountainous, and it receives quite a lot of rain from the Atlantic, so it’s very green. The soil is workable but not very high quality, and in any case the dense forest and the many hills make it difficult to unite lots of land under one owner. So the Galicians became subsistence farmers, with each family owning their own little plot of land. As you can imagine, these differences in farming strategies have shaped the cultures of these two regions.

I am going on and on, and yet I am afraid I am not doing justice to the Spanish landscape. So here is the historian, J.H. Elliott, on the country’s geography:

“A dry, barren, impoverished land: 10 percent of its soil bare rock; 35 percent poor and unproductive; 45 percent moderately fertile; 10 percent rich. A peninsula separated from the continent of Europe by the mountain barrier of the Pyrenees—isolated and remote. A country divided within itself, broken by a high central tableland that stretches from the Pyrenees to the southern coast. No natural centre, no easy routes. Fragmented, disparate, a complex of different races, languages, and civilizations—this was, and is, Spain.”

Well, for style I doubt I’m going to beat that. I do think that Elliott exaggerates the harshness of the Spanish climate and the isolation of the country’s geography. But he does capture the strangely disunited quality of the landscape. Whenever I drive through the country I am surprised at the sharp contrasts from one region to another. Just yesterday I drove from the snowy, green mountains of Asturias into the incredibly flat and empty plains of León. I am sure that the United States, being so much bigger, contains more variety. But I doubt that any part of America can present such stark contrasts in such a small span of space. In a single day, driving from one end of the peninsula to the other, you can see sandy desserts, arid plains, ice-tipped mountains, verdant river valleys, and lush forests. 

When speaking of beautiful Spanish landscapes, we also cannot forget the country’s islands. There are the Baleares in the Mediteranean, which are lovely. But even more interesting are the Canary Islands. This is an archipelago located in the Atlantic, somewhere off the coast of Morocco. The islands are volcanic, which makes them especially fascinating to visit. The tallest mountain in Spain, el Teide, is located on the largest island of the archipelago: Tenerife. I’m sure I’ve never seen anything taller than Teide. The mountain (which is really the volcano that formed the island) stretched up to 3,700 meters. That’s 12,000 feet! And of course the whole height of the volcano is very apparent, since it’s right next to the ocean. I remember being on the plane as we took off from the island, passing through the clouds on the way up, and then seeing Teide above me.

Naturally, Teide is a national park. The island of Lanzarote, which is the third-largest in the archipelago, also has a national park, called Timanfaya. This is the part of Lanzarote that was most recently formed by a volcanic eruption. As a result, there’s basically no vegetation at all. And the rocks are twisted into all sorts of nightmarish shapes. It’s both beautiful and hellish.

Well, I can’t hope to do justice to every one of Spain’s beautiful landscapes in the podcast. But if you take away one thing, I hope it is that Spain has more than just beaches and sun. The geography is fascinatingly diverse, and you can’t hope to understand the variety of Spain’s many regions without knowing something about its many different climates. The national parks are especially wonderful and are just as worth visiting as Spain’s many cultural treasures. Spain is a fortunate country.

Thank you