The Hudson River School of Fly Fishing

How Angling Artists Helped Birth the Outdoor Recreation Movement in America

“The painters who were attracted to the Catskills by Thomas Cole’s success took to traveling the mountains with a paintbrush in one hand and a trout rod in the other.” – Alf Evers, The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock

I have worn many hats over my many years, yet I awake each morning and self-identify as an artist. Still, most of my time is consumed by “the real world,” as we call it, endured for the fantasy of my time outdoors. Through it all, the “artist” remains the guise with which I navigate the world. I believe the mountains are an ideal place for artists to live, so I am here, with river and mountain and valley views. I simply cannot concentrate anywhere else. However, living in the Catskill Mountains and visiting are two different experiences. While many New Yorkers have relocated throughout upstate New York in recent years, the idea of visiting the wilds of the mountains as a form of relaxation was, at one time, of little interest.

Outdoor recreation in untamed environments was cultivated, in part, by The Hudson River School of Artists, who were drawn here by its remarkable beauty. Their alluring paintings were advertisements to New Yorkers, and eventually to the world, that being in raw, unmanicured nature was a worthwhile pursuit beyond experiencing picturesque views. Ironically, many artists of the movement were fly fishermen.

Chasing brook trout led artists up rivers and atop mountains to document the exquisite views of New York and beyond. Fly fishing is an activity to which I am deeply indebted. My immersion in the cool waters of these Catskill Mountains is a near-daily baptism that renews the spirit. I stare at living paintings and touch the finned ones while standing waist-deep in the rivers that capture the clouds. American paintings of the 1800s inspired NYC dwellers, and eventually, all of America, to venture beyond the city and commune with wild nature. Camping, hiking, and fishing in upstate New York were first embraced by the adventurous but quickly appealed to the fashionable elite. Today, our time outdoors also serves as a replacement for the homesteading past of the American frontier.

The Birth of Outdoor Recreation

It’s important to note that The Hudson River School was not a school at all but an American art movement that lasted for roughly 50 years from 1825-1875. As the great painters of the early 19th century congregated in Western Europe, most of America’s best image-makers became expats who relocated to study in London and France. Compare an early 1800s American painting to Flemish works done hundreds of years earlier, and you’ll see that what we were producing wasn’t all that exciting. However, an artist named Thomas Cole, acknowledged as the movement’s founder, took a different approach.

Born in Northwestern England, he emigrated to the US with his family when he was seventeen and studied in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1823. A short two years later, he moved to NYC. After a visit to the Catskills, where he made detailed drawings and notes, he returned to his studio and produced three masterpieces in oil. They were exhibited in October of the same year and sold to three American artists who helped thrust Cole and the Hudson River Valley into a whirlwind of national success.

Something about Cole’s approach to the centuries-old genre of landscape painting was entirely new. That newness was the personification of the natural world. No longer just the setting within which human endeavor created the narrative, nature itself became the main character. Additionally, Cole painted in a grand style meant to evoke in the viewer a reverence similar to the experience of entering a cathedral. In many of his early works, Cole eradicated nearly all evidence of man’s existence to allow nature to move toward the viewer and empower its ability to challenge us to self-reflect. We were no longer voyeurs. The paintings allowed us to project our own stories and, in a sense, become co-creators of the reflections our minds generate in their presence.

Additionally, Cole relocated our point of view to that of the explorer. His 1826 painting, Katterskill Falls, places us behind the falls, looking outward through the cascading water. Instead of merely observing the location made famous by Washington Irving in his 1819 story “Rip Van Winkle,” Cole gets us right into the scene. I liken the experience of viewing the works of The Hudson River School to Joseph Campbell’s descriptions of the hero’s journey. Campbell writes, “The hero journey is a symbol that binds … two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity.” In this sense, the initial viewing of these works in the 1800s allowed individuals to find meaning beyond what was dictated by the artist. From an art historical standpoint, it was incredibly modern. It ultimately allowed America to finally assert itself into the cultural canon of the international art world. Harvey K Flad says it similarly, “The landscape of the Hudson River Valley was at the same time a fact of natural history and an image that stimulated an emotional response.”

The emotional responses we feel from our time in nature also indicate our connection to the history of American culture. What we see informs our reality, and the compulsion to venture outdoors inspired by the works of the Hudson River School is not dissimilar from the envy we hold for the digital travelers we see on social media. Media produces behavior models, and herein lies the cultural component – life imitating art. Artists were explorers, painting the explorer’s view and inspiring others quite literally to follow in their footsteps. And follow we did. The symbiotic growth of the desire to recreate outdoors with an escalation of the style of the Hudson River School impacted the nation profoundly for most of the 1800s. Cole’s grand style was taken to the extreme by other artists who emphasized grandeur thematically and physically by creating enormously sized works. The Hudson River School’s larger-than-life paintings were the day’s high definition. When Frederic Edwin Church (creator of Olana in Hudson, NY) exhibited “Heart of the Andes” in 1859, he charged $.25 just to view it. The exhibit attracted over 100,000 viewers in the first two weeks and solidified Church as one of America’s greatest painters.

Angling Artist Explorers

Although Cole himself was not an angler, many of his disciples were. His friend and fellow explorer, Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886), was an avid fly fisherman who became the de facto leader of the movement upon Cole’s sudden death in 1848. Durand was sought after as a teacher, not only of painting but of the art of fly fishing, and was often accompanied by students “who might acquire painting and fishing skills simultaneously.” By the 1850s, Durand and other artist anglers were angling their way through the high peaks region of the eastern Catskills, producing works along the way. The quickest route was to follow the rivers descending from their peaks. I relate to the act of seeking when it comes to fishing. My soul follows the fish, and what I find is always a perfect scene. To me, however, the Catskilian paintings of the Hudson River School serve an altogether different purpose. They reaffirm my time outside because they are a reflection of things I have already seen rather than things I long for. The paintings are of places I know intimately, into which I have already projected the people, the casts, and the trout I’ve caught. Making memories in nature often documents our personal histories in ways that are a form of immortality. Our legacies, born in the hills and entrusted to our descendants, keep our love of nature cherished by future generations.

Contemporary Seekers of the Outdoor Lifestyle

Even before Covid, city dwellers had begun rekindling their relationship with the outdoors. Fly fishing was already undergoing a resurgence well ahead of the pandemic that would reestablish its popularity across the country. Homesteading tendencies as simple as growing vegetables set us on a path back to nature as early as 2009 when the White House installed its first vegetable garden since WWII. Being forced outside to stay safe during the pandemic further reinforced that the outdoor lifestyle remains vital to a well-balanced modern life. I often wonder if the luxury of living in the mountains is unbalanced in the other direction. Too much of a good thing. Within that consideration, however, is a deep desire to protect the environment that surrounds me. This, ironically, became an enormous component of The Hudson River School’s mission, most especially in the later works of Thomas Cole, whose conscious use of the images he created to reveal more profound truths about industrialization and the inevitability that our pristine lands would be overtaken and lost to the engines of progress.

Ultimately, the actual conservation of our lands and the power of the visual image to illuminate the importance of such an act were reflected in the establishment of our National Parks System. As American museums, so young compared to the great museums of Western Europe, struggled to amass significant collections, the conservation of our natural treasures became a surrogate for the art we had come to admire. In turn, the conservation movement, inspired by artists and anglers, helped further complete our Western migration in the form of outdoor tourism in America.

It seems a logical progression that the more we praise and receive from Mother Nature, the more we wish to become enveloped by her. Admiration for the outdoors gives way to our desire to physically enter the woods and the water. Our primal instincts to conquer peaks and sleep under the stars have physical and emotional rewards that help us feel more connected to our life’s true path. Nature is a modern place of worship. The setting for reminders of how we return to the world better capable of achieving our personal goals while retaining a sense of respect and understanding for our neighbors.

Join me next time for an article about outdoor quests where I’ll investigate challenges from the Catskill 3500 to angling all seven rivers of the Charmed Circle of the Catskills.

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Todd Spire is a contributing author and lives in the Hudson Valley, NY. To learn more about him, read his interview HERE.

Featured photo: “Kaaterskill Falls” by Thomas Cole.
Photos courtesy of Todd Spire @toddspire

Bibliography:
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work. Print
Flad, Harvey K. Watershed : The Hudson Valley Art Project. New York: Minetta Brook, 2002. Print.
Ed Van Put, Trout Fishing in the Catskills, 70. 2007. Print
Alf Evers, The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock, 397. Print.

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The Hudson River School Art Trail

To visit the magnificent views made famous by Hudson River School artists, please experience The Hudson River School Art Trail, which includes maps, itineraries, and more.

About Thomas Cole National Historic Site

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site preserves and interprets the original home and studios of the artist and early environmentalist Thomas Cole (1801-1848). Cole founded the influential art movement in the United States, now known as the Hudson River School of Landscape Painting.