New York City SHSAT 2017

during the 1820s in the Hudson River Valley and
surrounding locations. Heavily influenced by
European Romanticism, these painters set out to
( 10 )convey the remoteness and splendor of the American
wilderness. The strongly nationalistic tone of their
paintings caught the spirit of the times, and within a
generation the movement had mushroomed to include
landscape painters from all over the United States.
( 15 )Canvases celebrating such typically American scenes
as Niagara Falls, Boston Harbor, and the expansion of
the railroad into rural Pennsylvania were greeted with
enormous popular acclaim.
One factor contributing to the success of the
( 20 )Hudson River School was the rapid growth of
American nationalism in the early nineteenth century.
The War of 1812 had given the United States a
new sense of pride in its identity, and as the nation
continued to grow, there was a desire to compete with
( 25 )Europe on both economic and cultural grounds. The
vast panoramas of the Hudson River School fitted the
bill perfectly by providing a new movement in art that
was unmistakably American in origin. The Hudson
River School also arrived at a time when writers in
( 30 )the United States were turning their attention to the
wilderness as a unique aspect of their nationality. The
Hudson River School profited from this nostalgia
because they effectively represented the continent
the way it used to be. The view that the American
( 35 )character was formed by the frontier experience
was widely held, and many writers were concerned
about the future of a country that was becoming
increasingly urbanized.
In keeping with this nationalistic spirit, even the
( 40 )painting style of the Hudson River School exhibited
a strong sense of American identity. Although many
of the artists studied in Europe, their paintings show a
desire to be free of European artistic rules. Regarding
the natural landscape as a direct manifestation of
( 45 )God, the Hudson River School painters attempted to
record what they saw as accurately as possible. Unlike
European painters who brought to their canvases