Our Top 10 Painting Locations in the Hudson River Highlands

Moment Supreme Watercolor John Hulsey

The Highlands of the Hudson River Valley are among the most beautiful scenery anywhere. They are similar in many ways to the incredible landscapes of the Norwegian fjords. Eleven hundred foot mountains simply fall off vertically to meet the estuarine river below. An estuary is defined as an “arm of the sea”, and so the Hudson River is fed both by the ocean tide and the fresh water descending from its source at Lake Tear of the Clouds, high in the Adirondacks. As the river climbs north from New York City, the land rises also, first into low hills on the east side and the sheer rock faces of the Palisades to the west. Around Nyack and Haverstraw, where the river is at its widest, nearly 2 miles across, the distinctive bowl-shape of the valley is well-established. This bowl begins to narrow into a gorge as the river passes Peekskill and begins to be squeezed between the tall granite mountains, most notably High Tor to the w…