The second generation of Hudson River school artists emerged to prominence after Cole's premature death in 1848; its members included Cole's prize pupils Frederic Edwin Church, John Frederick Kensett, and Sanford Robinson Gifford. Works by artists of this second generation are often described as examples of Luminism. In addition to pursuing their art, many of the artists, including Kensett, Gifford and Church, were among the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 

Most of the finest works of the Hudson River school were painted between 1855 and 1875. During that time, artists like Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt were celebrities, influenced by the Düsseldorf school of painting. When Church exhibited paintings like Niagara or Icebergs of the North, thousands of people would line up around the block and pay fifty cents a head to view the solitary work. The epic size of the landscapes in these paintings, unexampled in earlier American painting, reminded Americans of the vast, untamed, but magnificent wilderness areas in their country, and their works helped build upon movements to settle the American West, preserve national parks, and create city parks.