View from Olana

This year, the July 4th weekend was hot and humid in the New York City region, and up the Hudson valley as well. Monday looked like a good day to go to Olana, the painter Frederic Edwin Church's home south of Hudson, NY. The website, olana.org stated that the house was open on holiday Mondays. Foolish me, I believed them. The house was closed but the grounds were open.

Frederic Church was a terrific painter, one of that group, which included Thomas Cole, whose house and studio were just across the river, called the Hudson River School. Their works were dramatic and filled with a special light that you recognize when you visit the Hudson Valley. They painted their locale: the Hudson, the Hudson Highlands, the Catskills, as well as remote locations they visited, such as the Andes. If you aren't familiar with their work, you ought to look them up.

Here's a link to Church's "Clouds over Olana".
Here's a link to Cole's "Falls of Kaaterskill".

They were greater painters than I a photographer, but still, I took a few photos. It was hazy as well as hot, but the views across the Hudson demanded I try. You can judge the results:

 

I don't know what house that is across the Hudson in Catskill, NY - I was hoping to see the painter Thomas Cole's home, but I'm pretty sure that isn't it.

That's the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. It's a few miles south of Hudson, and driving past it a little earlier, I thought about the Hudson River crossings from the George Washington Bridge in NYC up to this one - there aren't a lot of them and they are all dramatic.