Composing a Landscape: Tips from the Hudson River School

Here are several of the inventive ways the Hudson River painters used to accurately express scope:

• Make it huge. Paint a breathtakingly expansive scene best viewed from a distance, all the while providing interesting details in the low foreround for viewers who come in close.
• Going wider. Use smaller canvases with wide horizontal proportions to capture a panoramic-like splendor.
• Framing the foreground. Use the foreground, elevated, as a frame to look into a broad expanse of landscape and distances.

  Learn more about the Hudson River School painters in the May issue of The Artist’s Magazine.