Birth Year : 1801
Death Year : 1848
Country : US
Thomas Cole, outstanding Hudson River landscapist, was born in Lancashire,
England. He was apprenticed to a textile designer and engraver before immigrating,
with this family, to Philadelphia in 1819. In Philadelphia, he added the
technique of wood engraving to his repetoire. When the Cole family moved
to Stuebenville, Ohio Thomas made a short voyage to the West Indies before
joining them. In Ohio, he became an itinerant portrait painter for some
years and then returned to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
where he was most influenced by the landscapes of Thomas Birch and Thomas
Doughty. In 1825 Cole moved to New York
City, spent a summer roaming around the Catskills, and made his debut as
a landscapist. His work was markedly romantic yet minutely exact, dramatic
yet scrupulously naturalistic in composition and leaned heavily toward
the unspoiled, primeval aspects of nature. Three of his first paintings
were purchased by well-known artists, which helped establish his reputation
rapidly. Cole began to spend more and more time in the mountains and along
the shores of the Hudson River, but when he decided to go to Europe in
1829, the poet William Cullen Bryant exhorted him in a sonnet to "keep
that earlier, wilder image bright."
In Europe, Cole discovered J.M.W. Turner,
Raphael, and Claude Lorrain
during his visit to London, Paris, Florence and Rome. After his return
to America in 1832 he began to combine his knowledge of European art with
his natural impulse to portray nature as he saw it. He painted series of
enormous allegorical significance: "The Course of Empire" (1836) and "The
Voyage of Life" (1839), are good examples of these. They were reproduced
as engravings and they sold very well, providing him with the means to
return to Rome in 1841 where he closed himself off from the world to paint
a second version of "The Voyage of Life". The work was badly received in
Rome and Cole returned to his family, to the home he had established in
Catskill-on-Hudson, and to his beloved mountains. He was ill, depressed,
and tortured, and spent the remainder of his life painting the romantic,
realistic landscapes that are his greatest works. With their striking contrasts
of light and shade, their inherent feeling of God's presence in nature,
their exquisitely fine detail and warm color, they are the keystone of
American landscape painting-honest, moving, and beautiful.
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Thomas
Cole
Notch
Of The White Mountains (Crawford Notch)
Thomas
Cole
Last
of the Mohicans
Thomas
Cole
The
Course of Empire: Destruction
Thomas
Cole
View
from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm -
The Oxbow
Thomas
Cole
Course
of the Empire -- The Consummation of Empire
View
all Thomas Cole
Books about Thomas
Cole |
