The Hudson River School of Incarceration: Sing Sing Prison in Antebellum New York

New York's Sing Sing Prison's first two decades coincided with the emergence of the Hudson River School of Painting. The differences between the two were dramatic: the Hudson River School emphasized an idealized “natural magnificence” whereas the prison extracted silent, profitable labor through routine beatings. Tourists and other visitors to the prison struggled to reconcile their expectations of the Hudson River with what they witnessed in the prison on its banks. Prison practices and the Hudson River School unexpectedly converged between 1844 and 1848, when phrenology simultaneously influenced the Hudson River School and prison reformers. Although its influence on the administration of the prison was short lived, the Hudson River School of Incarceration would have a lasting impact in the shift from religion to science in the administration of prisons.