Respuesta :

The Hudson River school was based on an ideal of an idyllic natural paradise, very much like the Eden of the Judeo-Christian tradition. When the first European colonists came to American they found it more or less populated. However, the Native American population experienced cataclysmic pandemics due to contact with European strains of viruses and other diseases that they had no immunity for and millions of them were wiped out by such diseases. When the later colonization waves came to America they then found an uninhabited land, seemingly untouched by the presence of man and because they were unaware that the Natives had succumbed to diseases brought in by the colonists they fell to the illusion that America was a virginal land, a primordial paradise untouched by civilization.

The Hudson River School was an American version of pictorial Romanticism. They idealized the sublime of nature and thereby had a profound affection and respect for it. They saw it as a new Eden – untarnished by the evils of Europe - that had been given by God to Americans to preserve and where to live in happy communion with nature.

Considering that during the Gilded Age, industrialists used science to destroy nature in search for profit; such vision was in direct opposition to the Romantic ideals of the Hudson River School. During the Antebellum era, the South had remained a mostly Agrarian society, where nature was respected and protected as a source of both pleasure and profit. The North was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and even though Southerners envied their technological advantages they despised their extreme utilitarian materialism which translated in pollution, industrial ugliness and the exploitation of men (white men of course, Southerners were not concerned about the exploitation of black slaves).  

After the Civil; Northern capitalist industrialists abandoned all restrained and imposed their model to the entire nation and exploited both nature and man. This worsened during the Gilded Age and the resurgence of the Hudson river schools was a reaction to the extreme abuses of capitalist industrialists.


Significance of the Hudson River School in the antebellum era to the reaction to the exploitation of American environment during the Gilded Age was that it was warning against the environment exploitation because of factories established in the Gilded Age.

Further Explanations:

Antebellum era and the gilded age are of the same epoch but are absolutely dissimilar from each other. Glided age discussed to be the era in the United States marked by the monetary growth in the Northern and the Western areas of America. Rapid development of Industries and arrival of numerous migrants was also marked during the era while the Antebellum era refers to the era after the war that is marked by the nation’s expansion and economic reforms.

Hudson River School was an American art school established in the antebellum era. The school was famous for the group of painters of landscape, who were influenced by Romanticism. The paintings were describing the Hudson River Valley and the areas nearby them that include the White Mountains, Adirondack, and Catskill.

The painters of the schools were against industrialization as according to the industries will destroy the beauty of nature.

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Answer Details

Grade: High school

Subject: US History

Chapter: Hudson River School

Keywords: Hudson River School, American, art, antebellum era, landscape, Romanticism, Hudson River Valley, White Mountains, Adirondack, Catskill, Antebellum era, gilded age,