Junius Sloan’s Kaaterskill Lakes and the Catskill Mountain House: The Story of an American Cultural Icon
Story of an American Cultural Icon
You are looking at an area that covers about a four mile radius, at the eastern edge about twelve miles west of the Hudson River. This setting has inspired many artists, including Junius Sloan. Here’s a description of each site along your journey.
- SITE 2 – The Catskill Mountain House you see marked at the edge of the eastern escarpment of the Catskills, a promontory overlooking a Mountain House from above, with High Peak and Roundtop behind it, is from North Mountain. Go there to see images by Junius Sloan and others.
- SITE 3 – If you want to see the Catskill Mountain House from below in a painting by Thomas Cole’s sister Sara, head for the last big bend in the stage road.
- SITE 4 – Interested in description of the view from the first luxury resort hotel in America? Your tour guide here will be James Fenimore Cooper.
- SITE 5 – How about visiting Kaaterskill Falls, waterfalls higher than Niagara Falls? You could go there for your honeymoon– many did. View an image by Cole.
- SITE 6 – Provides dramatic overviews by Junius Sloan of the Kaaterskill Clove, a deep valley that became the unofficial outdoor painting school for American landscape painters during the 19th century.
- SITE 7 – The view from this site gives you a fine Junius Sloan painting of the Clove.
- SITE 8 – Takes you into the Clove to see famous images by Asher B. Durand and one of Junius Sloan’s finest landscapes.
- SITE 9 – Read more about Rip Van Winkle.
Map of the larger area
Cole, Thomas. “Essays on American Scenery.” The Collected Essays and Prose Sketches. The John Colet Archive of American Literature, Volume 7. Marshall Tymn, ed. St. Paul: John Colet Press, 1980.
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Pioneers. James Wallace, ed. New York: Oxford University Press,1991.
Irving, Washington. “Rip Van Winkle.” The Norton Anthology of American Fiction, 5th ed. Nina Baym, ed. New York: W.W Norton and Co., 1998.
Van Zandt, Roland. The Catskill Mountain House. Hensonville: Black Dome Press Corp, 1997.
A Virtual Exhibition sponsored by the Valparaiso University Brauer Museum of Art