About the Exhibition

American Sublime

The plunging Niagara... the unbounded Great Plains... the soaring peaks of the Rocky Mountains. The Hudson River School painters surveyed our American wilderness, seeing in it the manifestations of personal liberty and pioneering spirit. In their awe-inspiring canvases can be seen the ultimate expressions of the 18th-century aesthetic concept of the Sublime. Organized by the Tate Britain in London to illustrate the link between these American artist-philosophers and their European counterparts, American Sublime explores topics from the exquisite beauty of the untamed wild to the heartbreaking realities of Industrialization. The exhibition celebrates the inspired vision of Bierstadt, Church, Cole, Cropsey, Durand, Heade, Kensett, Gifford and others with more than sixty astounding grand-scale oil paintings, mixed with smaller works and oil sketches.