Thomas Cole
born Feb. 1, 1801, Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, Eng.
died Feb. 11, 1848, Catskill, N.Y., U.S.
American Romantic landscape painter who was a founder of the Hudson
River school.
Cole's family immigrated first to Philadelphia and then settled in
Steubenville, Ohio. He was trained by an itinerant portrait painter
named Stein and then spent two years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts. In 1825 some of Cole's landscapes in a New York shop window
attracted the attention of Colonel John Trumbull and the painter Asher
B. Durand. They bought his works and found him patrons, assuring his
future success.
In 1826 Cole made his home in the village of Catskill, N.Y., on the
western bank of the Hudson River. From there he frequently journeyed
through the Northeast, primarily on foot, making pencil studies of the
landscape. He used these sketches to compose pictures in his studio
during the winter. One of Cole's most effective landscape paintings,
“The Ox-Bow” (1846; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), was the
result of pencil studies that he made in Massachusetts. Cole's scenes of
the Hudson River valley, reverently recorded, echoed the loneliness and
mystery of the North American forests. Cole could paint direct and
factual landscapes recorded in minute detail, but he was also capable of
producing grandiose and dramatic imaginaryvistas using bold effects of
light and chiaroscuro. When the human figure appears in his works, it is
always subordinate to the majesty of the surrounding landscape.
Cole spent the years 1829–32 and 1841–42 abroad, mainly in Italy. He
lived in Florence with the American sculptor HoratioGreenough. When he
returned to the United States, he painted five huge canvases for a
series entitled “The Courseof Empire” (1836). These paintings are
allegories on the progress of mankind based on the Count de Volney's
Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires (1791). A second
series, called “The Voyage of Life” (begun 1839), depicts a symbolic
journey from infancy to old age in four scenes. Shortly before he died
Cole began still another series, “The Cross of the World,” which was of
a religious nature.
Durand's well-known painting “Kindred Spirits” (1849; New York Public
Library), painted in Cole's memory the year after his death, paid
tribute to Cole's close friendship with the poet William Cullen Bryant.
