Another View of Hudson in the 19th Century

Yesterday, Gossips published excerpts from the letter to the editor that appeared in the New-York Daily Times for May 28, 1853, and told how Hudson was once "a place of no mean importance," was now in decline, but was "looking forward to better days" thanks to creation of the Hudson Iron Works. Today, we share a different view of Hudson, expressed in an article about the artist Arthur Parton (1842-1914), written by Gilbert Cranmer, which appeared in the American Art Journal in 1895. 

Mr. Parton was born in the staid, picturesque old town of Hudson, New York, something over fifty years ago. He was fortunate in this birthplace, for Hudson has, perhaps, produced more artists of the first rank than any other town of the same size in this country. The venerable Frederick Edwin Church, whose "Niagara" remains a generation after it was first exhibited one of the most impressive products of American landscape art, has passed the better part of his professional career in Hudson; John B. Bristol was born and passed his earlier years in and about the town; the life work of the late Sanford R. Gifford had its inception there, while Mr. Parton's brother Ernest, whose work as a painter begun here has been wrought out with notable success on the other side of the sea, was born and reared in Hudson. Others might be mentioned, but these names are sufficient to indicate the influences under which Mr. Parton came to manhood and which could not help but be potent in shaping the career of a youth imbued with artistic impulses and an abiding love for the beautiful.

Below is Arthur Parton's painting of South Bay and Mt. Merino.

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