This informal association was America's first so-called school of painting and the dominant landscape style until the Civil War. The name derives from a group of 19th-century landscape painters working in New York state. With realistic composition, they depicted romantic views of unsettled areas of the Hudson River Valley especially lakes, rocky gorges, and forests in the Catskill Mountains. About a fourth of these artists utilized luminism or effects with special lighting techniques to convey lofty emotions through contrasts of light and dark.

Albert Bierstadt	Nevada Falls	Niagara Falls	Rocky Mountains	Sierra Nevada
John William Casilear	Distant View of the Catskills	Forest Path	Lake George	Landscape
Johann Hermann Carmiencke	Catskill Clove	Hudson River At Cold Spring	Landscape, Hyde Park, New York	The Hudson River At Hyde Park, New York
Samuel Colman	On the Viga, Outskirts of the City of Mexico	Storm King on the Hudson	Sunset After Rain, A Sketch from Nature	Kanawha River Valley
Jasper Francis Cropsey	Autumn Landscape, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Orange County, New York	Lake Wawayanda	Niagara Falls in Winter	Pompton Plains, New Jersey
Thomas Doughty	Landscape with Stream and Mountains	Mountain and Lake	On the Hudson	River View with Hunters and Dogs
Robert Duncanson	Romantic Landscape	Landscape with Campsite	Landscape with Cows Watering in a Stream	Landscape with Lake
Asher Brown Durand	A Pastoral Scene	High Point: Shandaken Mountains	Imaginary Landscape	Landscape - Composition: In the Catskills
James McDougal Hart	Picnic on the Hudson	Sunday Afternoon, Berkshire County, Mass.	Under the Elms	Village Scene near Albany, New York
William Hart	A Quiet Nook	An Autumn Day	Autumn Morning	Autumn Scene in the Adirondacks
Martin Johnson Heade	Approaching Thunder Storm	April Showers	Newburyport Meadows	Rocks in New England
Hermann Ottomar Herzog	A Mountain Torrent	Bears by Stream	By the Banks	Campfire in Moonlight
Thomas Hill	A View of the Hetch Hetchy Valley with Deer in the Foreground and Mount Conness in the Distance	Angler's Camp Below Nevada Falls	Artist at His Easel in the Woods	Donnner Lake
David Johnson	Near Squam Lake, New Hampshire	Bayside, New Rochelle, New York	On the Unadilla, New York	River Landscape at Sunset
Jervis McEntee	After The Storm	Autumn	Autumn Landscape	Clearing Skies
Thomas Moran	Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming Territory	Excelsior Geyser, Yellowstone Park	Fort George Island, Florida	Green River Cliffs, Wyoming
Worthington Whittredge	A Home By The Seaside	Crow's Nest	Evening In The Woods	Forest Interior