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In Thomas Cole's studio |
Even though we look across Lake Champlain to New York State every
day, we have never spent as much time exploring it as we have explored, say,
New Hampshire. Or Maine. Simply saying “New York State”
is a pretty vague reference, considering that it literally covers a lot of ground. I suppose I still see it as an ex-New
Yorker, NYC having been known to me as “the City” when I grew up there, as in “the
City,”
with its sphere of influence that coats everything within a hundred miles in every
direction with NYC pixie dust. But
then there’s all the humongous rest of it. This includes the known world (the Adirondacks, the
Catskills, possibly the Finger Lakes) and the unknown world (the almost-Midwest
part and what’s called “upstate,” meaning whatever else.)
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Sunset over Seneca Lake from the eastern side
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On the northern head of Seneca Lake, one of the Fingers (lakes
that from the air really look like skeletal digits) is Geneva, our destination for the
graduation of grandson Nick from Hobart/William Smith. En route we had been entertained by the
names of places we were passing through.
What better than Ninety Six Corners, Holland Patent, Hoffmeister, Speculator,
or Street Road? Later on a Graco-Roman
patch arrived with Syracuse, Seneca, Rome, Ovid, Pompey, and signs to Ithaca
and Troy.
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Hobart College docks in Geneva, Lake Seneca fogging up |
Then it was bagpipes and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. Both would be repeated a week later for
the graduation of grandson Hans from the Waring School in Massachusetts. Nick was one of two student speakers at
Hobart, talking of his dad’s influence and support for his
experience at Hobart. Hans was one
of 28 speakers (yes! three minutes each) at
Waring where each student in this small class spoke humorously, seriously,
poignantly about themselves, and their past four years at Waring.
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Nick, with proud parents Mike and Christine |
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Hans. All 28 graduates wore wreaths made by parents the previous evening. Next year: Here at Middlebury! |
Between graduations we crossed through the rolling hills and apple
country of eastern upstate to the Catskills and, ultimately, Hudson, New
York. Hudson is a town that
bridges two parts of New York State:
the “upstate” part and the NYC sphere, the latter
more strongly than the former these days.
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Dining in Hudson: Ken shadowed, at Ca'Mea |
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Dining in Hudson: Limoncello dessert, at Ca'Mea |
A
mere two-hour Amtrak trip from Penn Station brings New Yorkers up the Hudson
River to the oldest continuously operating train station in the country. (Given our second-rate national railroad system that might not be saying much.) The NYC pixie dust sprinkled somewhat
unevenly in Hudson is responsible for the many good restaurants, art galleries,
boutiques, and exorbitant prices in local B&B’s. The town has good bones–a treasury of 19th century
and early 20th century buildings– making for a beautiful
downtown. All is not entirely rehabbed
or gentrified, as is evident by decay amidst the restorations, as well as the
less-than-chic housing around the edges of town.
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Some houses have restoration potential... |
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Others are looking terrific... |
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And some are just amazing looking, like our B&B. (That's not our car.) |
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But there are streets that look a bit depressing |
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A still functioning old Hudson firehouse, right on Warren Street, hard by galleries and restaurants |
When you drive across the Rip Van Winkle bridge and cross the
Hudson River immediately east of the Catskills you can't miss seeing Olana. The creation of 19th century painter
Frederick Church, Olana, just a few miles south of Hudson, adorns the mountaintop like a
Christmas ornament on a tree. I've
wanted to see it up close ever since I saw it years ago on a return trip from
Pennsylvania. We took a tour
the next afternoon.
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Olana, in an orangey light (NYTIMES) |
Church was a member of the Hudson River School of 19th century American landscape painting.
His mentor was Thomas Cole, one of the best known of that group of
artists. Many people have undoubtedly heard of the Hudson River School since the artists’ most famous works
are as often found in American history texts as museums. They illustrate an age, a time when the
Industrial Revolution was being felt in areas once pristine, trees were being
churned into lumber, and railroads were being blasted through. Up to that time landscape painters of
quality were expected to be European and European-trained. “Hudson
River School” was a derisive term at the time for a group of artists who were
self-taught and very much “unschooled.” No Beaux Arts for them. How un-European! How American. They took their inspiration from
the natural world of this newer country, and put it on the map for Art. The Catskills were inspiration for Cole who painted the mountains as God’s
creation rather than translating them photographically.
Enhanced, in other words, by admiration, worship even. You can take several hikes out of Hudson to see some of the places
that inspired paintings like Kaaterskill Falls.
One can still see the mountains to the west from Cole’s
porch looking pretty much as he saw them.
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The Thomas Cole house. |
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The Catskill view, from Cole's porch |
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Cole's studio |
Frederick Church, like his contemporary Albert Bierstadt, painted
big: great wide-angle landscapes,
imagined like enhanced visual memories.*
They say to us: Nature is spectacular!
Look! Appreciate! This in the mid 1800's when the
development of roads, destruction of forests, and the rise of industry was
chugging away big-time. The
20-odd painters of this era helped put the American landscape on the map, and became the
most popular artists of their time.
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The entrance facade. "Welcome" is written in Arabic atop the front door. |
With wealth from his huge commercial success as a painter (he was
a savvy promoter of his work) Church designed his dream house in the late 1860's. It incorporated his ideas of beauty and
his admiration of oriental architecture discovered in his wide travels. The house was
technologically advanced as well: central
heating and plumbing! Mark Twain visited and was inspired architecturally. (His house in Hartford, Connecticut, built a few years later, is about as elaborate as Olana.) Thanks to
long-lived heirs with no penchant whatsoever for change, the home remained intact to this day, inside and out. (Although rescued
at the last minute from sale by a nephew in 1966 following the death of
Church's daughter in 1964.) The vast
grounds, albeit somewhat less vast than they once were, had been shaped by another contemporary, the Frederick Law Olmsted of Central Park fame. The sweeping drive to the house, the rounded meadow with trees in just the right places, the view of the Hudson River mirrored in the artificial lake––it all reminded me of World's End in Massachusetts, also an Olmsted design.
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Landscape by design: the shape of the lake at left mirrors the shape of the Hudson. Not seen so clearly on a misty day. |
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A view toward the Catskills from an Olana porch. You can see the Rip Van Winkle bridge. |
Sadly no photography was allowed inside Olana. This was disappointing because the interior
was completely furnished down to the last teacup, and as eclectic as the
exterior. Olana also hosted, as did the Cole house, a contemporary art exhibit
sponsored by the guardians of both homes, a group called River Crossings. My second-favorite piece was an outline on the wall in brilliant silver of the entire Hudson River by Maya Lin.
My favorite piece, though, was an easel set in the dining room that held
a copy of one of Church’s landscapes well on its way to being turned into Swiss
cheese by carved woodpeckers. A comment
on his relation with the natural world, perhaps? He was an early conservationist as well as painter. An
admirer, one may assume, of woodpeckers.
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Landscape, with woodpeckers. No, I couldn't have taken this photo. Ripped from the pages of the NYTIMES. |
*My favorites of the Hudson River School? Albert Bierstadt's "Estes Park," and Church's "Niagara Falls." Both highly romantic pieces.