Cultivating a Taste for Scenery
When the Romantic conception of nature began taking hold in America, especially the Hudson Valley, attitudes towards the region’s scenery changed. The owners and residents of estates such as Blithewood, Montgomery Place, and Clermont were closely involved in these changing conceptions of Hudson Valley scenery, and their estates became examples of a Romantic aesthetic. Some of these elite citizens had personal relationships with famous Hudson River landscape painters, or practiced landscape painting themselves.