The sobriquet was first applied around 1879. While it was not intended as flattering, it was hardly inappropriate. The Academicians at whom it was aimed had worked and socialized in New

　　York, the Hudson's port city, and had painted the river and its shores with varying frequency. Most important, perhaps, was that they had all maintained with a certain fidelity a manner of technique and composition consistent with those of America's first popular landscape artist, Thomas Cole,who built a career painting the Catskill Mountain scenery bordering the Hudson River. A possible implication in the term applied to the group of landscapists was that many of them had, like Cole,lived on or near the banks of the Hudson. Further, the river had long served as the principal route toother sketching grounds favored by the Academicians, particularly the Adirondacks and the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire.

　　1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

　　(A) The National Academy of Design

　　(B) Paintings that featured the Hudson River

　　(C) North American landscape paintings

　　(D) The training of American artists in European academies

　　2. Before 1870, what was considered the most representative kind of American painting?

　　(A) Figural painting

　　(B) Landscape painting

　　(C) Impressionistic painting

　　(D) Historical painting

　　3. The word "struggle" in line 5 is closest in meaning to

　　(A) connection

　　(B) distance

　　(C) communication

　　(D) competition

　　4. The word "monopolized" in line 7 is closest in meaning to

　　(A) alarmed

　　(B) dominated

　　(C) repelled

　　(D) pursued