The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents exhibit titled “Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School” running from Sunday, Dec. 7 through June 7 in the Resnick Pavilion.

(photo courtesy LACMA)

The exhibit is the West Coast presentation of the New-York Historical Society’s premier collection of 19th Century American landscape paintings. The exhibition features 45 paintings and represents 23 renowned artists who led the American landscape movement, including Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt, among others. For the first time on the West Coast, all five paintings that compose Thomas Cole’s series, “The Course of the Empire” (c.1834-36) will be displayed.

“It’s an honor to share the New-York Historical Society’s exceptional holdings of iconic American landscape paintings with Los Angeles,” LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg director Michael Govan said. “The Hudson River School paintings are a critical part of American visual culture, and we’re thrilled for this rare opportunity to host these works on the West Coast.”

Originating high in the Adirondack Mountains, the Hudson River served as a vital military and commercial waterway, commanded over the centuries by Native Americans, the Dutch, and later the English until the American Revolution. The associations enriched the visually evocative terrain of the Hudson River Valley and New England, producing schools of painting and literature grounded in specific scenery and history.  Hudson River School artists would eventually seek inspiration farther from home, in places such as California’s Yosemite Valley and the Andes in South America.

Artists of the Hudson River School used traditional techniques to create large, scenic landscapes that evoked a sense of adventure while documenting a vast new territory, including natural wonders, forests, mountain ranges, rivers and miles of rich land for agriculture. As this notion became popular, national and local pride stimulated the development of an “American Grand Tour”, celebrating multiple sites known for their picturesque and sublime qualities.

LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

For information, call the phone number (323)857-6000, or visit www.lacma.org.