Hudson River School

And it's a national park, and it's the crown jewel of the national parks.

And it has this incredible rich history, both with the Hudson River School and with Carlton Watkins.

I'd never debated when I had the concept for this piece, what the image would be.

I wasn't like,

I spend a lot of time reading.

I read a lot and look at a lot of other works that that piece brings to mind.

When I was making this piece, I Revisited Bierstadt and the Hudson River School.

I revisited Warhol's Shadows for a long time.

Unless you

want to go in there and paint like a Hudson River School painting.

Totally.

It's so classic.

you know, John Singer Sargent, who was more late 19th to early 20th century.

I think, you know, we've had the privilege and we'll be offering some, I think, amazing works by those artists in our upcoming sales and those are artists where we are seeing again participation from our core american clientele but also international participation and new client participation i think another market that feels kind of very healthy throughout is the western art market We have been, for the past few years, hosting a dedicated Western auction, and that has really been for us to target and focus those specific buyers in January instead of also mixing it in with Hudson River School pictures, which is what we had done before.

And that buying base is younger.

They are bidding.

I also think that you have the option of You know controlling your time you can walk outside of your house here And you know if you go like 20 minutes down the street from where I am like here I'm surrounded by a bunch of old houses and stuff, but 20 minutes down the street And you're just like in a field with some cows you know and it's and you're you're pretty you know Devoid of human contact you know not too far from here so you can kind of stem that energetic thrust you know that's coming off of the historical relics of this area you know

and Jesse we just I just filmed with Jesse yeah he was mentioning you know there is this a very profound history of artists to being so close to New York coming here in this area there's a lot of like things happening we were just at the waterfalls and there's like You know these little informative panels that you have in these these trails sometimes and it's just a painting A historical painting that this painter like hundreds of years ago Hudson River school painter Yeah, they would just there was the view exactly that they would came to paint We're just in front and you see the panel like there is this cool history in that sense

Oh, yeah.

It's interesting.

and there is something about the way the shadows fall in a valley that's very dramatic.

It almost looks like something out of a Salvador Dali painting where there's these really long black shadows.

And you see the Hudson River School painters like Frederick Church and a number of other artists who are very famous from around here.

They capture that kind of majestic light that you have in that area.

There were two landscapes when she arrived at the White House.

She got Hudson River School artists in there.

She got the first impressionist, the first luminous, the first post-impressionist, the first modernist, the first still lifes.

And she really established the themes of the collection in doing that because she really established themes that were really portraits of the American experience and American history.

She focused intently on the beauty and the diversity of America.

So landscape was another big theme.

She acquired the first Hudson River School landscape painting, which also happened to be of Niagara Falls, one of our great natural wonders.

And it's the first image of Niagara Falls in the collection.