‘From the Hudson to the Pleasant River’ at MOTHERS Gallery features the landscapes of Richard Bazelow and David Vosburgh

MOTHERS Art & Antique Gallery announce their next exhibition, “From the Hudson to the Pleasant River,” featuring the paintings of David Vosburgh and Richard Bazelow, which will open with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Aug. 4 and will remain on display through Aug. 24.

The Hudson River School was the first truly American school of painting. The landscapes often juxtaposed agriculture and the remaining wilderness, which was fast disappearing from the Hudson Valley, just as it was coming to be appreciated for its qualities of rugged beauty. Their reverence for America’s natural beauty was shared with contemporary American writers such as Thoreau and Emerson. While the first generation of painters focused on the Hudson River, the second-generation expanded to other unspoiled locales, including Maine in general and Mount Desert Island in particular.

Standing on any high point of Acadia National Park and looking at the strikingly bold coastline in any direction, it’s easy to be overcome by the power and beauty of this landscape. This feeling is precisely what drew early artists, looking to find inspiration for their paintings, to visit Mount Desert Island and environs in the mid 1800s. To this day, Downeast Maine is the last unspoiled part of the Eastern Seaboard, and long the favorite haunt of local and non local landscape painters.

After returning from an exhibition on Hudson River landscape paintings in May,1847, a reviewer for the New York Literary World wrote, “Yankee enterprise has little sympathy with the picturesque, and it behooves our artists to rescue from its grasp the little that is left before it is forever too late. This is their mission.” This is precisely the mission of Richard Bazelow and David Vosburgh through their landscapes of New England, from the mighty Hudson River to the meandering Pleasant River, which ends in a series of rapids in the village of Columbia Falls, the location of MOTHERS Art Gallery — the epitome of bucolic New England. There is a delicious contrast between the paintings of Richard Bazelow and David Vosburgh — while both are devoted en plein air painters, Richard works quickly and impressionistically, whereas David works slowly,  and luminously.

Richard Bazelow has lived most of his life in the Hudson Valley of New York. It’s where he spent his early years walking the woods and painting before he realized there was a name for it. It’s where he would leave as a young man to see the broader world around him, and then return to live his life. The Catskill Mountains were north, Hudson River east, and the Shawangunk Mountains west. Surrounded by that kind of landscape, it was easy to grow up appreciating the unique perspectives that nature offers. Richard is a member of a number of well known artist organizations and shows at galleries in New England and the mid-Atlantic area.

David Vosburgh was born into a family of artists in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. He began to study art at the age of 14. His quiet, light-filled paintings possess a profound sense of place, perhaps not surprisingly, as his family has lived in New England and the neighboring Hudson Valley for nearly four centuries. Since the beginning he has focused exclusively on landscape and his work has enjoyed growing popularity among collectors. A member of several art societies in the Northeast, David is an Elected Artist member of the American Artist’s Professional League. His painting Berkshire Nocturne: Lime Kiln Road was awarded the Hudson Valley Art Association’s prize for landscape in 2021.

MOTHERS’ next exhibition, in September, will be a four-person show titled “CALIFLORA” and featuring photographs and paintings of San Francisco Bay Area flora by Clare Olivares, Irene Imfeld, John Watson and Whitney Vosburgh.

MOTHERS Art Gallery is at 19 Church Hill Circle, Columbia Falls. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday from May 1 to Sept. 21 but closed during the last week of each month, otherwise open by appointment by calling 510-504-1109. Learn more at www.mothersartgallery.com.