Landscape painting was big from the late 1700’s to the Civil War times in the 1860’s in the US. There were a number of big names and some of their works are in exhibition during this summer…

Nature and the Nation Opens in St. Louis
Art Daily

…By the 1850s, landscape painting dominated the annual exhibitions held in New York and other metropolitan centers, receiving the lion’s share of critical attention, and the seasonal travels of artists were faithfully reported in the daily newspapers. Over the course of a decade, the work of landscape painters developed into a national school centered in the Hudson River Valley. Thomas Cole, considered the founder of the Hudson River School, inspired a generation of painters with his bucolic scenes of sweeping valleys seen from mountaintops, imagined historical subjects in dramatic mountain settings, and grand visions of the pastoral countryside.

Cole and the Hudson River School painters helped to make the Catskill Mountains in New York, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and much of New England into not only what many accepted as representative of the national landscape, but also popular tourist destinations. As urban life became increasingly frenzied, excursions into nature became a welcomed respite from the pressures of modern living. For those able to afford them, landscape paintings hung in dining rooms and parlors and became daily reminders of nature’s restorative power. More...

View some works by artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Frederic Church.