Often referred to as America’s “first true artistic fraternity,” the Hudson River School was a group of landscape painters who lived and worked in the Hudson River Valley and surrounding areas in upstate New York from 1825 to 1870. Inspired by Romanticism, the group, including artists John Frederick Kensett, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Jasper Francis Cropsey, William Stanley Haseltine, Martin Johnson Heade, Thomas Cole, and Albert Bierstadt, believed the American landscape was a pure reflection of God, and espoused a utopian vision where humans and nature could live together in harmony. Their detailed, sometimes idealized landscapes contrasted other contemporary depictions of a hard, rugged America, and were rooted in the idea of the Sublime.