The world’s best collection of Hudson River School paintings returns, after a two-and-a-half year national tour, to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, June 2-December 31. The homecoming is billed as “American Splendor: Hudson River School Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Collection.”

In addition to more than 60 major paintings by Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Sanford Gifford, John Kensett and others, “American Splendor” will include a newly acquired landscape sketchbook, circa 1810-1820, by Daniel Wadsworth, alongside watercolors, prints, popular travel guides and Staffordshire plates bearing images of American scenery.

Niagara Falls, the Hudson River, Yosemite Valley and the vivid leaves of autumn – the natural wonders of the New World fascinated America’s first school of landscape painters. The core of the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Hudson River school collection was formed by two major patrons of American artists who lived in Hartford – Daniel Wadsworth (1771-1848), a picturesque traveler, amateur artist and architect, and founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum, and Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt (1826-1905), widow of arms manufacturer Samuel Colt and creator of a private picture gallery during the Civil War. Many works were commissioned for their personal enjoyment. Due to their patronage, the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collection reflects the evolving aesthetic sensibilities of two generations of Hudson River School painters.

Frederic E. Church, “Vale of St Thomas, Jamaica,” 1867, oil on canvas, 48 5/16 by 84 5/8 inches. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; bequest of Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, 1905.

In turn, the works reveal an emerging national identity thatis echoed in Nineteenth Century American literature (for instance,Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “On Art” and James Fenimore Cooper’snovel, The Last of the Mohicans).

The origins of the Hudson River School traditionally are attributed to Cole, who arrived in New York City in 1825. A more cerebral painter than John Trumbull, Alvan Fisher and others who preceded him, Cole used his art as a moral as well as aesthetic platform.

He broke from the traditional, European taste for manicured, pastoral views, instead opting to depict the virginal, primeval wilderness of the American Northeast. It was a paradise already lost, however. Native Americans had been chased from their lands, white settlements were long established and tourism was beginning to boom.

Although the rise of an American school of landscape painters is attributed to New York, one might argue that the Hudson River School has roots in the Connecticut River Valley. Not only were there important patrons, there were two leading artists in the second generation of the Hudson River school who were Connecticut natives – Church and Kensett.

It was Wadsworth who introduced the 17-year-old Hartford native and aspirant artist Church to Cole, who in turn made Church his sole apprentice. Wadsworth purchased Church’s first mature painting, “Hooker and Company journeying through the wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford in 1636,” 1846, for $130, acquiring it for the newly founded Wadsworth Atheneum.

John F. Kensett, “Coast Scene With Figures (Beverly Shore),” 1869, oil on canvas, 36 by 60 3/8 inches. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1942.

The artist was 20 years of age. Later, during the Civil War,Church advised Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt in assembling animpressive private picture gallery for her mansion, “Armsmear,” inHartford. He introduced her to Bierstadt, William Bradford,Kensett, Gifford and others, from whom she commissioned paintings.

“American Splendor: Hudson River School Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Collection” is curated by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Krieble curator of American painting and sculpture at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The catalog, titled Hudson River School Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and published by Yale University Press (October 2003) is $45 and available in The Museum Shop.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is at 600 Main Street. For information, www.wadsworthatheneum.org or 860-278-2670.