Site #15 Hudson River from Vanderbilt Mansion

Introduction

German-born Johann Hermann Carmiencke (1810-1867) abandoned a highly successful career as a landscape painter in Copenhagen, Denmark, to emigrate to America when war broke out between Denmark and his native country in 1851. Settling in Brooklyn, he took almost instantly to the subject of the Hudson River, which in the tourist literature of his day was compared often to Germany's Rhine. In 1856, Carmiencke made the pencil sketch (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) for this painting of the view north on the Hudson, showing the ledges of the Shawangunks on the left and the eastern Catskill Mountains in the background. The artist was standing on the picturesque grounds in Hyde Park of Walter Langdon, a grandson of John Jacob Astor, whose property was eventually sold to Frederic William Vanderbilt, grandson of shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1898 Frederic Vanderbilt erected a magnificent beaux arts mansion that remains today a national historic site, accessed from Route 9. Carmiencke's prospect may still be enjoyed from the west portico and grounds of the Vanderbilt estate overlooking the river. Hyde Park, New York is one of at least two paintings (the other, dated 1856, is in the Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida) that Carmiencke made of the vista north, in both of which he compressed the breadth of the mountains visible from the spot in order to accommodate the proportions of his canvas.

Map & Directions

Driving Directions: We recommend Google Map . Site coordinates: 41.795673 Lat., -73.943329 Long.

Location Notes: Vanderbilt Mansion is in the Hudson River Valley in Dutchess County, New York. It is on Route 9 in Hyde Park, about 90 miles north of New York City and 70 miles south of Albany. The address to use for computer driving instructions to the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, please use the following coordinates 41.796912, -73.942623 (Vanderbilt Mansion NHS is 2 miles north of the Home of FDR).

Photography / Painting Credits

Johann Hermann Carmiencke, Hyde Park: View Up the Hudson, 1859, oil on canas, 33 1/8 x 43 1/4 in. Dick S. Ramsey Fund, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Anonymous, Hudson River from Vanderbilt Mansion, 17 May 2012, Photograph. Courtesy of Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites. 

Johann Hermann Carmiencke, Hyde Park, 1856, Graphite and white gouache on brown wove paper, 16 3/16 x 24 1/16 in. Morris K. Jesup Fund.