Scene+on+the+Hudson

Date: 1845
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1968/1968.138_1a.jpg?itok=0SlZIieE width="374" height="254" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/scene-hudson-rip-van-winkle-9888"]] || Title: **Scene on the Hudson (Rip Van Winkle)**

Artist: **James Hamilton** Born: Entrien, Ireland 1819 Died: San Francisco, California 1878

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 38 x 57 1/8 in. (96.6 x 145.1 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase

Accession: 1968.138 || Hamilton's painting combines several scenes from Washington Irving's short story. The hazy river valley beyond the trees evokes the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle looked out over the Hudson River "moving on its silent but majestic course." Beneath the cavernous rock, several men enjoy a game of ninepins while Rip drinks the brew that will make him sleep for twenty years and awake to a different world. Irving wrote his stories for sophisticated urban Americans, whose fast-moving culture, fed by the nation’s industrialization, was displacing the rural society of the old Dutch Knickerbockers of the Hudson Valley.
 * Exhibition Label: **


 * Suggested Questions: **
 * What is going on in this picture? What seems to be the most important part?
 * How would you describe the landscape?
 * What are the people doing? What story could you tell based on the image?

Hamilton Packet
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Resources: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Links: **