Jervis McEntee: Painter-Poet of the Hudson River School

Lee A. Vedder is an independent curator, art historian, and museum consultant.

Jervis McEntee presents new scholarship and color reproductions that redefine McEntee's place in the history of nineteenth-century American landscape painting. The lead essay by exhibition curator Lee A. Vedder makes the case that McEntee was far more than a painter of somber late fall landscapes. He set his own course, absorbing influences of his fellow Hudson River school painters including Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford, and Asher B. Durand, while also responding to the atmospheric painting of J. M. W. Turner, the trauma of the Civil War, and the shifts in American tastes to French Barbizon painting and Impressionism. Additional essays expand the scope of McEntee scholarship. Kerry Dean Carso presents the influence of the landscape and industrial development of Rondout (later Kingston), New York, McEntee's native city. David Schuyler reappraises the art and career of this fascinating artist, who played such a pivotal role in the art and culture of his day. The catalogue also includes reprints of key texts from the rare memorial publication Jervis McEntee: American Landscape Painter (1892).