Author: John P. O'Grady

Kindred Spirits

The painting is called Kindred Spirits. It was created by Asher B. Durand in 1849 to memorialize his close friend and fellow landscape artist Thomas Cole, who died unexpectedly the previous year. The two...

Saint Mary of the Mountain

The old cemetery sits on a small rise above the highway just east of the village of Hunter. Well over a century has passed since the last interment. The monuments—some of which are still...

Medusa Cemetery

A car pulls into the cemetery in Medusa, New York. Three people are inside the vehicle: two women—one younger, one middle-aged—and an old man wearing a hat. The middle-aged woman is driving, the old man...

Artist Graveyards

Not long ago, I made a trip down the mountain and across the river to Columbia County to visit historic Hudson City Cemetery. I was looking for the grave of Sanford Robinson Gifford, who...

Fred the Artist

The artist Fred De Sawal had his studio in a ramshackle cottage along old Route 23 in Leeds, New York. It was located not far from the Jolly House resort, where some of his...

Hotel Kaaterskill

Hotel Kaaterskill was a house built of spite. Legend has it that in the summer of 1880, George F. Harding—a highly successful Philadelphia lawyer and habitué of the Catskill Mountain House—got into a row...

Poet’s Ledge

By John P. O’Grady At the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design in 1861, Sanford Robinson Gifford’s latest artwork was hailed as “the great picture of the season, the crowning glory of...

An Artist’s Studio in Rondout

Hudson River School artist Jervis McEntee was born in the village of Rondout, New York in 1828. His father, James, was an engineer and prominent citizen in the community. In 1848, the elder McEntee...

Borrowed Scenery

Driving home from the other side of the river, I stopped for gas at a place close by Cedar Grove, the home of Thomas Cole—now a National Historic Landmark—in the village of Catskill. I...