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Over about fifty years, starting in 1825, the artists of the Hudson River School painted the landscapes of the northeastern United States with both a romantic eye and a concern for accuracy. As ecologist Edward K. Faison writes, the period in which these painters did their work happened to coincide with a time of massive change in the region’s ecology, and their paintings captured this shift.

Unlike in Europe, where forests were replaced by farmland over the course of centuries, in parts of North America it took only a couple of generations. Around the end of the eighteenth century, about 80 percent of New England was forested—down from over 90 percent when European colonists first arrived. By 1850, forest accounted for less than 60 percent of land. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were all down to around 30 percent, while New York State dropped to about 25 percent.

A painting of eastern Pennsylvania by George Inness from around 1856, The Lackawanna Valley, shows an expanse of land covered in stumps, with a train running through it.

“It is both a jarring scene of the raw conversion of forest to field and a powerful statement that humanity is no longer dwarfed in the presence of wild nature,” Faison writes.

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Just a decade later, another eastern Pennsylvania landscape painting, The Valley of Wyoming by Jasper Cropsey, shows a pastoral landscape of grazing cows and lounging people—something that only a person knowledgeable about the region would recognize as a former forest rather than a natural grassland. However, Faison does see clues in the painting about the work necessary to maintain the agrarian land. Farmhands in the distance are harvesting hay, not only to provide winter fodder for animals but also to destroy seedling trees and shrubs that might otherwise overgrow the area, while distant plumes of smoke suggest the possible burning of fields after harvest for the same reason. Meanwhile, a worn path and exposed rocks point to the erosion caused by intensive grazing.

Deer sometimes appear in the Hudson River School paintings as symbols of wilderness. Faison notes that this may seem odd to anyone familiar with the prevalence of deer in suburban landscapes, but at the time, they were so widely hunted for hides and meat that it was rare to see them in inhabited areas. Likewise, even in 1825, few beavers were left in the area, which explains why the artists’ many paintings of ponds and streams did not show the animals or any signs of their presence.

The painters were aware of what was happening. In 1841, Thomas Cole wrote, in the voice of the forest, “Our doom is near… No more the deer shall haunt these bosky glens, Nor the pert squirrel chatter near his store.”

But, contrary to Cole’s predictions, the forests weren’t gone forever. As the Northeast industrialized, agriculture moved west, eastern forests returned, and wildlife made a comeback.

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By: Edward K. Faison

Arnoldia, Vol. 73, No. 2 (2015), pp. 2–18

Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University

By: Jasper Francis Cropsey

Oil on canvas, 1865

Open: The Metropolitan Museum of Art