The Hudson River School artist Worthington Whittredge was, like many others of that School, a member of the Century Association in New York, which has deep holdings of its artist members, including Whittredge. The following is from an essay in one of the club’s monthly bulletins about him and others in the movement, with club members’ names in all caps along with their years of membership:
“WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE (1820—1910; Cen. 1862—1910) was born on a farm in Ohio. He moved to Cincinnati at seventeen to learn sign-painting, but soon turned to fine art. By 1841 he was exhibiting his work at the Cincinnati Academy. American artists of the period studied in Europe, and in 1849 Whittredge went to Dusseldorf, where he learned composition, perspective, and an invisible brushstroke. He learned to use natural light to powerful effect, flooding a scene with crimson sunset, or using still water to double daylight. His works were polished, accomplished, and subtly infused with emotion. He also learned the Dusseldorf approach to subject matter—a radical reaction to the traditions of history and religious painting. These celebrated glory and power and drama, but Dusseldorf students were taught to focus on the humble, the mundane. They produced genre scenes, ordinary people in ordinary surroundings.
“Whittredge studied also in Rome; in 1859 he settled in New York. In 1862 he became a member of the National Academy and was proposed for the Century by JOHN FREDERICK KENSETT (Cent.1849—1872): Whittredge was now a distinguished part of the New York art establishment. Whittredge belonged to the Hudson River School. Prominent Centurion members of this included the titans ASHER B. DURAND (1847—1886), Kensett, SANFORD R. GIFFORD (Cen. 1859—1880), FREDERIC E. CHURCH (Cen. 1850—1900), and ALBERT BIERSTADT (Cen. 1862—1902). These artists celebrated the American landscape in all its splendor—the great eastern forests, the rugged western mountains and vast prairies, as well as the broad and luminous Hudson River. Thomas Cole, the school’s forefather, taught that a painting should deliver a moral or historical message. These artists portrayed the landscape as greater than human, as sublime and unfathomable, majestic, threatening and mysterious.”
