Hudson River School painters - Thomas Cole

I am on a trip to Hudson and Catskill, New York to research the terrain of the Hudson River School of painters and its effect upon the designed landscape of Central Park. While working on my Central Park photo project I noticed that the landscape images I was taking bore a strong resemblance to both the landscape and light of the Hudson River School.paintings. It was only later I learned that there was a direct co-relationship between the two. This brought me to the villages of Hudson and Catskill to learn more about the painters, and specifically Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. 

Painting of a Catskill mountain scene by Thomas Cole in 1844.

The home of Thomas Cole in Catskill./Cole is considered the father of the Hudson River School of painters, many of whom studied with him in the area. 

The front poarch of Cole's house looks out upon this scene of the Catskill mountains, which served as the subject for many of Cole's paintings.

Thomas Cole is credited with starting the school of Hudson River painters, but it was a student of his who had the most influence on the scenery of Central Park. More on him tomorrow.

To make this project more interesting I brought along two cameras I wanted to compare with one another. They are the Sony Nex-6 and Fuji X-E1 and will be the subject of a future blog post.