Scene on the Hudson (Rip Van Winkle)

James Hamilton, Scene on the Hudson (Rip Van Winkle), 1845, oil on canvas, 38 x 57 ¹⁄₈ in. (96.6 x 145.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1968.138

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Artwork Details

Title: Scene on the Hudson (Rip Van Winkle)
Artist: James Hamilton
Date: 1845
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 38 x 57 ¹⁄₈ in. (96.6 x 145.1 cm)
Credit Line: Museum purchase
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Animal — dog
Landscape — forest
Landscape — New York
Figure male — full length
Landscape — river — Hudson River
Literature — Irving — Rip Van Winkle
Object Number: 1968.138
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1968.138

Artwork Description

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, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006