Susie M. Barstow (1836–1923)
Untitled, 1868
Oil on canvas, 6 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.
Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Gift of Raymond Beecher, TC.2012.2

The style of Barstow’s early paintings can be characterized as that of the Hudson River School—romanticized, site-specific compositions with secluded depictions of nature’s beauty. They are not, however, like the grandiose panoramic visions of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt, which reflect the art market of the 1830s to the 1860s. Barstow and fellow artists, including Jervis McEntee, Julie Hart Beers, and John William Casilear, for example, were part of the second wave of the Hudson River School—an era after the Civil War in which Reconstruction and economic growth fueled the art market, spurring increased demand for smaller, intimate scenes of the American landscape. Artists such as Barstow responded enthusiastically to this call for parlor-sized compositions from a new and vibrant middle class of collectors who were eager to adorn their walls with scenes of the Catskills and the Green and White Mountains, with their rivers, lakes, streams, and wooded scenery—landscape as it still existed, seemingly untouched by industry or war. 

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