Exhibit text and accompanying images
For an introductory permanent exhibit at
Thomas Cole’s Cedar Grove
Spring Street
Catskill, NY 12414
[the exhibit opened in June 2000; images not included because of Web copyright issues]
David Seamon, Ph.D
Exhibit Writer
Tom Nelson
Exhibit designer
This exhibit overviews landscape painter Thomas Cole’s life and art, especially as the Catskill region and his Catskill home, Cedar Grove, played a part. The exhibit also presents Cole’s legacy as father of the Hudson River School and as one early representative of the American conservation movement.
The exhibit is composed of ten panels arranged in the outline presented below. The first four panels review Cole’s life and work up to his innovative series, The Course of Life. The next three panels discuss Cole’s coming to Cedar Grove and the importance of the Catskill region in his work. The last three panels conclude with his mature work and his artistic and environmental legacy.
1. A Painter of American Landscapes
2. Becoming a Landscape Painter
3. Experimentation and Growth
4. The Course of Empire
5. Coming to Cedar Grove
6. Living and Working at Cedar Grove
7. Cole and the Catskill Landscape
8. The Voyage of Life
9. Cole’s Last Years
10. The Legacy of Thomas Cole
The following script provides the text for each panel and the possible images and captions for that panel. The best currently-published version of each of these images is given in brackets after the descriptive entry for each caption. A full listing of these published sources is given on the next page.
1. A PAINTER OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPES [PANEL ONE]
To walk with nature as a poet is the necessary condition of a perfect artist.
--Thomas Cole
Best known for his powerful portrayals of the American wilderness, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) was the United States’ first great landscape painter. He radically changed both the nature of landscape painting and the way Americans perceived their new nation.
Landscape art was an American tradition before Cole’s time, but this early work was derivative from European models and did not express the energy or vision of the American people and their young republic. Cole’s aim was to raise the stature of landscape by portraying America’s wilderness and its association with God. His exhilarating pictures, including many of the Catskill region, awoke a passion for landscape that would dominate 19th-century American painting.
In 1836, Cole married a young woman from Catskill and resided for the rest of his life at Cedar Grove, her family home at the north end of the village. This exhibit overviews Cole’s life and art, especially as his Catskill home and the Catskill region played a part. The exhibit also presents Cole’s legacy as founder of the Hudson River School and as one early representative of the American conservation movement.
IMAGES FOR BOARD 1
IMAGE 1.1. Thomas Seir Cummings, Thomas Cole. Oil on canvas, c. 1826-1828, 36 ¼ x 29 ¼ in. Albany Institute of History and Art.[BACKPIECE OF ROBINSON’S THOMAS COLE: DRAWN TO NATURE]
Cummings was a close friend of Cole and painted his portrait in New York City during the time when the young painter’s work was rapidly gaining in stature.
IMAGE 2 & 3 [EARLIEST SKETCHES: TWO TREES]
IMAGE 1.2. Thomas Cole, Button Wood Tree, 1823, ink on paper, 13 ½ x 16 7/8 in., lower left: “Button Wood Tree/May 16th 1823.” Albany Institute of History and Art. [FRONTISPIECE OF ROBINSON AND LISTED IN ROBINSON, P. 94 AS ENTRY 21]
This sketch may be the earliest dated Cole drawing from nature. The sketch was done near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Monongahela River, where Cole lived for a short time.
IMAGE 1.3. Thomas Cole, [Tree] from Nature, pen and ink on paper, 9 1/16 x 7 ¼ in., lower left: “Thomas Cole, May 20th, 1823.” Albany Institute of History and Art [PUBLISHED IN HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM’S TO WALK WITH NATURE, p. 10, fig. 1; ALSO IN TRUETTNER AND WALLACH, p. 26, fig. 26]
This sketch is another of Cole’s earliest drawings. He was fascinated by trees and believed that, like human beings, they varied widely in character.
IMAGE 1.4. Unidentified photographer, South Façade of Cedar Grove in the Early 20th Century. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
Built in the early 1800s by a well-to-do Catskill merchant, Cedar Grove exemplifies a style of Federal architecture marked by its symmetrical placement of rooms and restricted use of decoration [IMAGE IN SET OF PHOTOS FROM VEDDER].
IMAGE 1.5. Thomas Cole, The Clove, Catskills, 1827. Oil on canvas, 25 x 33 in. (New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut). [GOOD COPY IN METROPOLITAN, AMERICAN PARADISE, P. 123]
This painting, depicting a passing storm in the Catskills, is one of Cole’s most accomplished early works and strikingly portrays the American wilderness. The artist creates a sense of visual drama through a series of contrasts. On one hand, the gnarled tree trunks, the impending storm clouds, the darkness of the mountain on the right, and the solitary Indian at the center all suggest solitude, impermanence, and change. On the other hand, the waterfall, the bright autumn colors, the emerging sunlight, and the settled sky of the distant horizon all suggest continuity and rebirth. This painting illustrates a major theme in all of Cole’s work: the brevity of life in contrast to nature’s eternal cycles of regeneration.
2. BECOMING A LANDSCAPE PAINTER [PANEL 2]
The painter of American scenery has, indeed, privileges superior to any other. All nature here is new to art.
--Thomas Cole
Born in Lancashire, England, on February 1, 1801, Cole was the seventh of eight children and the only son of James and Mary Cole. His father was a woolen manufacturer. At the age of about fourteen after a brief period of formal schooling, Cole was apprenticed to a calico designer to learn the art of engraving.
Because of financial difficulties, the Cole family emigrated to America in 1818. Cole spent a year alone in Philadelphia working as a wood engraver before moving to Steubenville, Ohio, where his father had started a wallpaper factory. There, Cole learned the essentials of oil painting from an itinerant portraitist and began to paint portraits and landscapes. In early 1923, Cole moved to Pittsburgh, where his father—unsuccessful commercially in Ohio—had established a floor-cloth manufactory.
Late in 1823, Cole returned to Philadelphia to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. A year and a half later, he moved to New York City to take a studio in the house where his family had recently resettled. Late in the summer of 1825, he traveled up the Hudson River on a sketching trip to locales that included the Hudson Highlands, West Point, and the Catskill Mountains. That autumn, he returned to New York City to transform pencil sketches from his trip into landscape paintings that quickly drew praise from art critics, collectors, and other painters.
The image of an untouched wilderness that Cole captured in these paintings was compelling and radically different from the prevailing artistic portrayal of nature that involved calm, classical scenes of European pastoral beauty and cultivated landscapes. In his depiction of mountainous, untamed American scenery, Cole created a new kind of aesthetic experience and enjoyment for Americans that no other painter at the time could equal.
IMAGES AND CAPTIONS
IMAGE 2.1. Thomas Cole, Moonlit Landscape with Two Figures, 1824. Charcoal and white chalk on colored paper. Private collection. [IN PERRY, 1986, P. 160;COULD WE MAKE OUR IMAGE FROM THIS COPY, SINCE THE PICTURE IS IN A PRIVATE COLLECTION?]
This early sketch indicates that, by the age of twenty-three, Cole had learned to evoke a sense of mystery in landscape by alternating light and dark. Also notice the fallen, twisted tree truck in the picture’s foreground—a compositional theme Cole would regularly use in his later landscape paintings such as Lake with Dead Trees, below.
IMAGES 2 AND 3 [PLACE TEXT FOR THESE TWO PANELS TOGETHER BECAUSE THEY CAN BE INTERPRETED AS PENDANTS]
IMAGE 2.2. Lake with Dead Trees (Catskill), 1825. Oil on canvas, 27 x 34 in (Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Gift of Charles F. Olney. [GOOD COPY IN TRUETTNER AND WALLACH, P. 24; ALSO IN BAIGELL, P. 29]
IMAGE 2.3. Kaaterskill Falls, 1826. Oil on canvas, 25 x 36 in. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. [BEST COPY IN POWELL, P. 14; GOOD COPY IN BAIGELL, P. 31]
Cole produced these two paintings after his 1825 summer sketching trip up the Hudson. These scenes, both near the site of the recently-opened Catskill Mountain House, were two of the first images of the Catskill region publicly displayed in New York City. Cole may have considered the two paintings to be pendants in that the still water and subdued sky of Lake with Dead Trees represent the serene beauty of wilderness, while the plunging waters and storm clouds of Kaaterskill Falls represent its overwhelming power.
IMAGE 2.4. Thomas Cole, Lake of Dead Trees, Catskill, 1825. Pencil on paper, 6 ¾ x 10 ¼ in. (irregular). Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund. 39.254. [COPY IN PERRY, 1988, P. 24]
This pencil sketch provided the base for the finished Lake with Dead Trees, above. Note the greater care Cole has taken with distant peaks and elements in the middle ground. Also note the outline of a large tree on the right, probably inserted later to test the tree’s effectiveness as a framing device. In the finished painting, a limbless tree is used as a frame on the left.
IMAGE 2.5. Thomas Cole, Kaaterskill Falls from Below, 1826. Oil on canvas, 43 x 36 in. Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. [BEST COPY IN AMERICAN PARADISE, P. 121]
Cole did several paintings of Kaaterskill Falls, but this version is perhaps most remarkable. Painted for New York merchant William Gracie for fifty dollars, the picture illustrates a compositional device that Cole often used: a dramatic, corner-to-corner X-pattern with a miniscule human figure—in this case, an Indian—placed at the intersection to heighten the sense of nature’s enormity and humankind’s insignificance.
IMAGE 2.6. Thomas Cole, Double Waterfall—Kaaterskill Falls, 1826. Pencil, charcoal, black and white crayon on paper, 16 ½ x 14 5/8 in. (irregular). Detroit Institute of Arts; Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund. 39.503. [COPY IN PERRY, 1988, P. 33]
By the time Cole visited the Mountain House area in 1825, tourism in the Catskills had already begun—note the observation deck and concession stands at the top of the falls. In his finished painting, Cole chose to ignore these human-made interventions and to emphasize the wild, awe-inspiring quality of the falls.
IMAGE 2.7. J. Loeffler, Kaaterskill Falls, c. 1860s or 1870s. Photograph. Published in J. Loeffler, Souvenir of the Catskill Mountains (Tompkinsville, NY, n.d.), pl. 5. [COPY IN PERRY, 1988, P. 32]
This photograph illustrates Kaaterskill Falls as they appeared some forty or fifty years after Cole painted them. One notes how Cole took the basic elements of the actual landscape and made them more wild and dramatic in his finished painting.
IMAGE 2.8. Opening of Erie Canal, 1825.[IMAGE TO BE LOCATED]
Cole’s first wilderness paintings went on display in New York just as the city was in the midst of a ten-day celebration of the opening of the Erie Canal. Throughout his life, Cole was deeply ambivalent about industrial progress. On one hand, he believed the development of science and technology was inevitable; on the other hand, he was one of the first Americans to recognize the potential environmental consequences of unbridled industrial development.
SIDEBAR FOR PANEL 2: INCLUDE WITH OR BE NEAR KAATERSKILL FALLS FROM BELOW
Cole was also a poet and essayist. During his painting career, he wrote prolifically, not only for his personal pleasure and to preserve impressions he might later paint, but also for publication. He contributed poetry, stories, and essays to journals and magazines. His written descriptions of landscapes and places are some of the most evocative in American literature. This passage is part of Cole’s journal entry depicting Kaaterskill Falls:
There is a deep gorge in the midst of the loftiest Catskills, which, at its upper end, is terminated by a mighty wall of rock; as the spectator approaches from below, he sees its craggy and impending front rising to the height of three hundred feet…
[L]ike a gush of living light from Heaven, the cataract leaps, and foaming into feathery spray, descends into a rocky basin one hundred and eighty feet below; thence the water flows over a platform forty or fifty feet, and precipitates itself over another rock eighty feet in height; then struggling and foaming through the shattered fragments of the mountains, and shadowed by fantastic trees, it plunges into the gloomy depths of the valley below….
It is a singular, a wonderful scene, whether viewed from above, where the stream leaps into the tremendous gulf scooped into the very heart of the huge mountain, or as seen from below the second fall (Thomas Cole, Thoughts and Occurrences, March 1843, as quoted in Louis L. Noble, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole).
3. EXPERIMENTATION AND GROWTH [PANEL 3]
You ask if my own “eye and taste” are satisfied with what I have done—I answer no…. [T]he road I travel “seems lengthening as I go” and I am sometimes ready to despair, for the summit of one hill of difficulty is the foot of another….
--Thomas Cole to Daniel Wadsworth, 1827
In the late 1820s, Cole began to experiment with more complex compositions in which he complemented his dramatic landscapes with historical, allegorical, and religious themes. One of the first of these efforts was a series of similar paintings depicting a scene from The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper’s best-selling novel of 1826.
Cole also produced a pair of religious allegories—The Garden of Eden and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. These two pictures were Cole’s first attempt to integrate landscape with biblical history. Though landscape would always be central in Cole’s work, these two paintings shifted the direction of his art toward picture sequences that presented historical, biblical, and moral arguments. Cole’s aim was to unite the American landscape with European and Judeo-Christian sources to create a higher style of historical landscape art that would instruct Americans in civic, ethical, and spiritual responsibilities.
In 1829, Cole traveled to Europe to study the great art works of the past. He visited the major galleries in London and Paris and lived in Italy from 1831 to 1832. The trip filled his imagination with new ideas and themes. He was more convinced than ever that his artistic responsibility was both to please the eye and also to instruct the mind.
IMAGES AND CAPTIONS
IMAGE 3.1. Thomas Cole, The Last of the Mohicans, 1827. Oil on canvas, 25 x 37 in. New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York.
In this scene, the young white woman Cora Munro throws herself at the feet of the Delaware tribal leader Tamenund, hoping to gain freedom for herself and her friends. This is probably the first American painting to illustrate a scene from an American novel in a landscape considered typically American. Cole painted four versions of this painting—including one for patron Robert Gilmor, Jr., and another (seen here) for patron Daniel Wadsworth.
IMAGE 3.2. William J. Hubbard, Portrait of Robert Gilmor, Jr., c. 1832, oil on panel, 20 ¾ x 14 ¾ in. The Baltimore Museum of Art. [COPY IN COLE HOUSE IMAGES]
Robert Gilmor, Jr., a wealthy Baltimore merchant, was highly educated and deeply interested in artistic and aesthetic concerns. In 1825, he and Cole began a correspondence on the vocabulary and philosophy of landscape painting that would help Cole’s development as an artist. In writing Cole about his version of The Last of the Mohicans, Gilmor explained that “The scenery is magnificent…your pencilling is really admirable” but “the arrangement of your rocks is artificial…forced…also the autumnal red & yellow of the trees…is too much…I think a little more green among them would have been a relief….”
IMAGE 3.3. Thomas Sully, Daniel Wadsworth, 1807, oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 21 7/8 in. Wadsworth Atheneum. [COPY IN COLE HOUSE IMAGES]
Daniel Wadsworth, from Hartford, Connecticut, was another one of Cole’s first important benefactors. Left a large inheritance from his father at the age of thirty-three, Wadsworth spent the rest of his life managing the family property, investing in land, and patronizing the arts. Unlike Robert Gilmor, Jr., who regularly criticized Cole’s work, Wadsworth was almost always enthusiastic and supportive. When he received his version of The Last of the Mohicans, he wrote to Cole: “I can hardly express my admiration, the grand & magnificent scenery…the deep Gulfs…the heavenly serenity of the firmament…the calm & lovely lake…all these objects so exquisitely finished, that it appears as if each one had been the object of particular care—blending the Whole perfectly. This seems without a Possibility of improvement.”
IMAGE 3.4. Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1827-28. Oil on canvas, 39 x 54 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, M. and M. Karolik Collection.[GOOD COPY IN TRUETTNER AND WALLACH, P. 45]
The Garden of Eden and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden were Cole’s first attempt at what he described as “a higher style of landscape than I have hitherto tried.” Although Adam and Eve are clearly shown to be suffering for their deed, the meaning of the painting is enhanced by the landscape. The lush vegetation and the amiable stream within the Garden contrast with the barren rocks and raging cataract outside. A volcano erupts, winds gust, a wolf challenged by a vulture devours a stag—all a harsh welcome for Adam and Eve driven out into the world of mortals.
4. THE COURSE OF EMPIRE [PANEL 4]
A series of pictures might be painted illustrating the mutation of Terrestial things…. All these scenes ought to have the same location.
--Thomas Cole to Robert Gilmor, 1829
In the fall of 1832, Cole returned from Europe. In early 1833, he was approached by Luman Reed, a wealthy New York City merchant who had grown up in Coxsackie, a village about ten miles north of Catskill. Reed wished to create a private picture gallery, and he wanted paintings by Cole as its centerpiece.
Four years before, Cole had proposed to Robert Gilmor a series of paintings that would present the rise and fall of human civilizations. Gilmor was not interested in Cole’s idea, but Reed was readily persuaded. When Cole described his vision, Reed purportedly responded, “Paint your dream for me.”
Cole took almost three years to complete the series, which he eventually entitled The Course of Empire. In his plan to integrate landscape painting and history, Cole proposed five canvases, four of equal size and one larger. The pictures were to be arranged in a carefully planned presentation with the larger picture placed over the gallery’s mantle piece and the smaller paintings hung as pairs on either side.
The sequence began with the “Savage State,” a presentation of a primitive people struggling to exist in the midst of a dominating nature. Cole’s second painting portrayed the gradual advancement of this primitive society to a “Pastoral or Arcadian State,” which over time transforms itself into the “Consummation of Empire,” where the primitive village of the first painting is now a magnificent city marked by the highest human accomplishments. The last two paintings of the series mark the decline and fall of this great civilization through “Destruction” in war and, finally, “Desolution,” in which the once-great city is now in ruins and without human life.
While Cole was working on the series, Luman Reed suddenly died, though his widow insisted that Cole finish the paintings, which he did in early October 1836. He immediately exhibited the series as a one-man show that ran from October 15 to December 15. The admission charge was fifty cents, and the popular success of the exhibit netted Cole over one thousand dollars.
At the time, the show was described as the most successful exhibition by one artist ever held in New York. James Fenimore Cooper exclaimed that “Not only do I consider The Course of Empire the work of the highest genius this country has ever produced, but I esteem it as one of the noblest works of art that has ever been wrought.”
IMAGES AND CAPTIONS
IMAGE 4.1. The Course of Empire: The Savage State, 1834. Oil on canvas, 39 ¼ x 63 ¼ in. New-York Historical Society. [BEST IMAGES IN TRUETTNER AND WALLACH, FIGS. 103-07]
Cole wrote a series of prose descriptions to accompany the five paintings in The Course of Empire. He explained that, in this first picture, “the Empire is asserted, although to a limited degree, over sea, land, and the animal kingdom.”
In this picture, the season is spring and the time of day is dawn as the sun rises above the bay on the left. Cole used the passage of the sun and seasons as one way to integrate the five pictures into a whole, thus the second painting represents morning and early summer; the third, midday and early autumn; the fourth, afternoon and mid-autumn; and the last, dusk and autumn’s end. Through this imagery, Cole wished to suggest that the daily journey of the sun and the shifting year of the seasons parallel the much longer progression of human history and human life.
IMAGE 4.2. The Course of Empire: The Pastoral or Arcadian State, 1834. Oil on canvas, 39 ¼ x 63 ¼ in. The New-York Historical Society.
In this picture, the descendents of the primitive hunter-gatherers of the first painting have established a village on the bay. Nature is being domesticated, and one notes the beginnings of art, craft, and science. Cole writes: “In this picture we have Agriculture, Commerce, and Religion…In the old man, who describes the mathematical figure—and in the rude attempt of the boy drawing—in the female figure with the distaff… and in the primitive temple on the hill, it is evident that the useful arts, the fine arts, and the sciences have made considerable progress.” Note how Cole uses the landscape as a feature of continuity: the distant mountain with its unusual rock appears, at slightly different angles, in all five paintings.
IMAGE 4.3. The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire, 1835-1836. Oil on canvas, 51 ¼ x 76 in. The New-York Historical Society.
In the third picture, the primitive village has become a powerful city. The natural bay has become an extensive harbor guarded by twin lighthouses. A triumphal procession in the foreground moves over a bridge as the conqueror, robed in purple, is mounted in a carriage drawn by an elephant. Cole writes: “In this scene is depicted the summit of human glory. The architecture, the ornamental embellishments &c., show that wealth, power, knowledge, and taste have worked together, and accomplished the highest meed of human achievement and empire. As the triumphal fete would indicate, man has conquered man—nations have been subjugated.”
IMAGE 4.4. The Course of Empire: Destruction, 1836. 39 ¼ x 63 ½ in. The New-York Historical Society.
Here, barbarians have overcome and pillaged the great city. Cole writes: “The picture represents the Vicious State, or State of Destruction…. Luxury has weakened and debased…. A barbarous and destroying enemy conquers and sacks the city. Description of this picture is perhaps needless—carnage and destruction are its elements.”
IMAGE 4.5. The Course of Empire: Desolation, 1836. Oil on canvas, 39 ¼ x 63 ¼ in. The New-York Historical Society.
The works of the great civilization are now in ruin. The day fades, the moon ascends, and nature reclaims its place. Cole writes: “But, though man and his works have perished, the steep promontory, with its insulated rock, still rears against the sky unmoved, unchanged. Violence and crime have crumbled the works of man, and art is again resolving into elemental nature. The gorgeous pageant has passed—the roar of battle has ceased—the multitude has sunk in the dust—the empire is extinct.”
IMAGE 4.6. Cole’s original installation diagram for The Course of Empire, 1833. Pen and brown ink over pencil on paper, 9 7/8 x 13 1/8 in. (irregular). Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund. 39. 351. [in Perry, 1988, p. 146]
In his original plan for the five paintings of the series, Cole also intended to create three narrow paintings for the very top of the wall to indicate the position of the sun in relationship to the series from dawn to high noon to dusk. Because of Reed’s unexpected death, Cole never painted the three smaller pictures.
IMAGE 4.7. The Course of Empire, 1833-36. Photograph of the special installation of the series, according to Cole’s original diagram, at the Museum of Art, Munson-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, from 8 July through 2 October 1983.
5. COMING TO CATSKILL AND CEDAR GROVE [PANEL 5]
I am once more in the midst of preparation for the country & shall start in a few days for my favourite haunt Catskill.
--Thomas Cole, April 17, 1835
Thomas Cole first visited the village of Catskill during that eventful summer of 1825 when he traveled up the Hudson to sketch. In 1826, he returned for a summer visit to the village and may have paid other brief visits in 1827-1829. The year after his return from Europe in 1832, Cole spent much of the summer and fall in Catskill, sketching, painting, and taking regular walks along Catskill Creek and trips into the mountains.
The year 1834 was momentous for both Cole and Catskill. In June, he rented studio space at Cedar Grove, owned by Catskill shopkeeper John Alexander Thomson. Cole’s first work space was probably in one of Cedar Grove’s outbuildings. There, he began work on the first painting of The Course of Empire.
Cedar Grove had been built in 1815 by Thomas T. Thomson, a retired merchant and a distinguished Catskill citizen. The house was part of Thomson’s eighty-eight-acre estate, which extended from Spring Street eastward to the Hudson River. The property included apple orchards and a working farm.
When Thomas T. Thomson died in 1821, he bequeathed Cedar Grove to his brother, John Alexander Thomson, a bachelor, who was better known as “Uncle Sandy.” Thomson lived at Cedar Grove with his unmarried sister, Catherine, and his four nieces and wards, Emily, Harriet, Frances, and Maria Bartow—all daughters of his sister, Maria Thomson Bartow, who had died in 1830.
Cole quickly grew attached to Thomson’s youngest niece, Maria. She left him flowers at his easel; he brought her gifts from New York. She read to him while he painted; he sketched her. They were married in the west front parlor of Cedar Grove on Tuesday, November 22, 1836, while The Course of Empire was on exhibition in New York City. He was thirty-five; she was twenty-three.
IMAGE 5.1. Unidentified photographer, Two late-19th-century Images of Cedar Grove. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
Typical of the vernacular, genteel rural houses of the Federal period, Cedar Grove is a substantial masonry structure built on the crest of a hill oriented toward the south with exceptional views of the Catskills to the west. The house is composed of two stories plus a full basement and attic. Typical of farmhouse construction, Cedar Grove was built into the hillside to provide access to the basement floor from the ground level—in this case, into the kitchen on the west side. This arrangement also provided temperature-controlled storage spaces on the uphill, east and south sides of the house.
IMAGE 5.2. Unidentified photographer, South Porch of Cedar Grove, Late 1800s. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
Full-façade porches were a typical feature of vernacular Federal houses. Cedar Grove had an L-shaped veranda, which stretched across the south façade and continued around the west side, which had enviable views of the Catskills.
IMAGE 5.3. Thomas Cole, Maria Bartow Cole (1838-1884), c. 1838, pencil on paper, 9 11/16 x 11 in. Albany Institute of History and Art [AS FAR AS I KNOW THIS HAS NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED; IT IS LISTED IN ROBINSON AS ENTRY 44 ON P. 95]
Cole often sketched Maria Bartow Cole. In a journal entry for November 6, 1834, he describes an afternoon walk with her and her older sister Harriet as chaperon: “In company with the girls H. & M. B. I took a walk through a favorite dell which we call the vale of Tempe…. A spirit of tranquility seems to dwell in this little valley. We gathered mosses, and noticed the beautiful effects of sunlight and shadow on the now almost leafless woods….”
IMAGE 5.4. Thomas Cole, Self-Portrait, 1832-36. Oil on canvas, 22 x 18 in. The New-York Historical Society. [BEST BLACK-AND-WHITE COPY IN TRUETTER AND WALLACH, P. 160; ONLY COLOR COPY I’VE FOUND IS IN POWELL, P. 99. I’D SUGGEST WE USE THE COLOR IMAGE—IT’S MUCH MORE POWERFUL]
Perhaps painted in Catskill, this self-portrait portrays Cole around the time of his marriage to Maria Bartow. In a November 10th note from New York where he was dealing with the exhibit of his Course of Empire, he wrote to his fiancée that he would return to Catskill with her uncle on the Saturday dayboat and that, after more experience shopping than he had ever had in his life, he hoped she would be pleased with what he had gotten her.
IMAGE 5.5. Unidentified photographer, West Parlor, Thomas Cole House, c. 1910. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
In this photograph, Cole’s daughter Emily sits in the west parlor. On the wall above the fireplace can be seen Cole’s painting, Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness (1843).
IMAGE 5.6. Unidentified photographer, Cole Family in Parlor of Cedar Grove, c. 1896. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
From left to right: Emily Cole, one of Thomas Cole’s daughters; Mary Emily Cole, granddaughter of the artist and daughter of Theodore Cole; Harriet Bartow, sister of Maria Bartow Cole; Eugenia Casey Cole, wife of Theodore Cole and mother of Florence, Mary, and Thomas III; Theodore Alexander Cole, standing, Thomas Cole’s son; Florence Haswell Cole, granddaughter of Thomas Cole and daughter of Theodore Cole; Thomas Cole III, on floor, grandson of Thomas Cole and son of Theodore Cole. The painting behind the group is Cole’s Sunset on the Arno (1831).
6. LIVING AND WORKING AT CEDAR GROVE [PANEL 6]
O Cedar Grove! Whene’er I think to part
From thine all peaceful shades my aching heart
Is like to his who leaves some blessed shore
A weeping exile ne’er to see it more—
--Thomas Cole, Catskill, November, 1834
Living arrangements at Cedar Grove were cramped. Maria’s three sisters never married and shared the large east bedroom upstairs. Thomas and Maria lived in the bedroom across the hall, while Uncle Sandy lived in the east parlor downstairs. The Coles had five children at Cedar Grove: Theodore, born on New Year’s Day, 1838; Mary, born a year later in 1839; Emily, born in 1843; Elizabeth, born in 1847 but dying in infancy; and Thomas II, born in 1848.
After his marriage to Maria, Cole continued to paint in his outbuilding studio until 1839, when he moved to the second story of a new carriage house built by Uncle Sandy and located a short distance southeast from the main house. Here Cole worked for the next seven years and created some of his best-known works, including the extraordinarily popular series, The Voyage of Life.
In June 1844, the eighteen-year-old Frederic Church arrived at Cedar Grove to study with Cole for two years. Church paid three dollars a week in board and probably stayed in a small bedroom in Cedar Grove’s attic. The two artists regularly went out sketching, and Cole proclaimed that his young pupil had “the finest eye for drawing in the world.”
In 1846, Uncle Sandy died, and ownership of Cedar Grove shifted to Thomson’s four nieces, including Cole’s wife. That fall, about a hundred yards south of the main house, Cole designed and built a new single-story studio in the Italianate style and spacious enough to accommodate the large canvases for new work he was contemplating.
“I am now sitting in my new studio,” he wrote on Christmas Day, 1846. “I have promised myself much enjoyment in it, and great success in the prosecution of my art. But I ought to bear in mind that ‘the night cometh, when no man can work’. I pray to God that what I am permitted to accomplish here may be to His glory.”
In fourteen months, Cole would be dead.
IMAGE 6.1. Unidentified photographer, Carriage House at Cedar Grove, c. 1900. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
From 1839 until 1846, Cole had a second-floor studio in this carriage house just southeast of the main house.
IMAGE 6.2. Unidentified photographer, West End of Carriage House at Cedar Grove, c. 1900. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
Cole’s studio was at the end of the carriage house closer to the main house. He wrote to artist and friend Asher B. Durand in late 1839: “Did you know I have got into a new painting room?…. It answers pretty well—it is somewhat larger than my old one, and… is really charming. What I shall be able to produce in it heaven knows. The walls are unplastered brick, with beams and timbers seen on every hand: not a bad colour this pale brick and mortar. I am engaged upon my great series [The Voyage of Life].”
IMAGE 6.3. Unidentified photographer, Carriage House at Cedar Grove, c. 1920. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
A photograph of the carriage house around 1920. Note the skylight to provide light to Cole’s second-floor studio.
IMAGE 6.4. Unidentified photographer, Interior of Cole’s Carriage House Studio. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
The interior of Cole’s studio in the carriage house, which in the 1950s would become an antique shop run by his granddaughter Florence Haswell Vincent.
IMAGE 6.5. Thomas Cole, Front Elevation Drawing for a House in the Italian Villa Style, c. 1840-41. Pen and black ink over pencil on paper, 26 9/16 x 19 3/8 in. (irregular). Detroit Institute of Arts; Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund. 39.555.
In the early 1840s, Cole drew architectural sketches for a three-story, towered Italianate villa he planned to build at Cedar Grove on one-and-a quarter acres of land he had purchased from Uncle Sandy. He delayed construction, however, because of “hard times and an adage which a knowing friend of mine uttered—‘fools build houses and wise men live in them’.” In fact, the house was never constructed.
IMAGE 6.6 . William Sidney Mount. Sketch of Theodore A. Cole, October 2, 1843. Pencil on paper, 9 ¾ x 6 ½ in. Toledo Museum of Art; anonymous gift. [IN PERRY, P. 317]
In the summer of 1843, the young artist William Sidney Mount visited Cole in Catskill and sketched his young son Theodore, just three months shy of his sixth birthday. Mount later wrote of the visit: “I spent several evenings with Mr. Cole at his house, we talked of painting and music and I found him (like the scenery that surrounded him) truly interesting…. We sketched and painted together in the open air and rambled about the mountains after the picturesque.”
IMAGE 6.7. Unidentified photographer, Emily Cole outside her Father’s Italianate Studio, c. 1900. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
Designed in the Italianate style by Cole, this second studio had windows from floor to ceiling. From this studio, Cole often walked up the knoll toward the river to sketch, then turned toward the mountains, especially favoring views of the Catskill escarpment where the Catskill Mountain House stood. At other times, he walked toward Catskill Creek.
IMAGE 6.8. Unidentified photographer, Emily Cole in Thomas Cole’s Second Studio, c. 1910. Sepia photograph mounted on cardboard; 8 1/8 x 10 in. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
Cole’s daughter Emily in the Italianate studio about 1910. The studio was demolished in 1973.
IMAGE 6.9 . Frederic Church, Study of a Tree, June 1844. Pencil. New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Olana State Historic Site, Taconic Region.[COPY IN HUNTINGTON, PLATE 6 AT END OF BOOK. PERHAPS SCAN DIRECTLY FROM THIS COPY?]
Young Frederic Church quickly learned Cole’s method of making studies from nature in pencil and ink. Church produced this pencil sketch shortly after he arrived at Cedar Grove. Within a year of study with Cole, Church was producing finished landscapes that the older artist judged fit to be shown at the National Academy exhibition in 1845.
IMAGE 6.10. Unidentified photographer, Second St. Luke’s Episcopal Church of Catskill, c. 1880s. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.
As his designs for the Italiante villa and Italianate studio indicate, Thomas Cole possessed considerable architectural skill. He also designed Catskill’s second St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Church Street in 1841. As originally planned by Cole, the building had side galleries with the pulpit located behind the altar. The congregation built a larger church on Williams Street in the 1890s, and Cole’s building was converted into an automobile garage. Later, after much modification, it became the offices for Catskill’s newspaper, The Daily Mail.
From memory ne’er can pass away….
--Thomas Cole, Catskill Mountains, 1845
After his first visit to the Catskills in 1825, Cole painted the mountains many times, including his Sunny Morning on the Hudson River (1827), one of the first paintings in which an artist portrayed the view east from the Catskills toward the Hudson and Berkshires.
When Cole first visited Catskill, he painted at least two views of the mountains as seen from Catskill Creek east of the village, but he was more interested in the wilder landscapes in the vicinity of the Catskill Mountain House. After 1832, however, most of Cole’s paintings of the Catskills were of the view from Catskill Creek not far from Cedar Grove. By the 1830s, in fact, he seems to have relied on the ready marketability of this view as a way to subsidize his other, more allegorical paintings.
From 1833, Cole painted at least twelve versions of this view of the mountains from Catskill Creek. The largest of these pictures was View on the Catskill, Early Autumn, painted in the winter of 1837-38 for New York merchant Jonathan Sturges, a business partner of Luman Reed. As he explained in a letter to Sturges in late 1836 or early 1837, the artist painted this picture to pay homage to the Catskill Creek landscape before the construction of the Catskill and Canajoharie Railroad in 1836 led to the cutting of the trees seen in the foreground of the picture. “They cut down the forest with a wantonness for which there is no excuse,” wrote Cole in a journal entry of August 1, 1836.
In 1843, Cole painted the view from Catskill Creek again. This time, however, he portrayed felled trees, and—in the place where a tree had stood in the 1838 view—a man with an ax looking out on a bare landscape now traversed by a train in the middle distance.
IMAGES AND CAPTIONS
IMAGE 7.1. Thomas Cole, Sunny Morning on the Hudson River, 1827. Oil on panel, 18 ¾ x 25 ¼ in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [GOOD COPY IN TRUETTNER AND WALACH, P. 55]
In this picture, Cole moved the Catskills’ Kaaterskill High Peak slightly to the north to open up a vista toward the Hudson River as the sun rises on an early morning. In an essay, Cole wrote that sunshine, especially morning sunshine, makes one’s spirits glow, whereas evening suggests sadness and melancholy.
IMAGE 7.2. Thomas Cole, The Catskill Mountain House: The Four Elements, 1843-44. Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 in. Alexander Gallery, New York.[GOOD COPY IN TRUETTNER AND WALLACH, P. 56]
Although Cole rarely painted the mountain top after 1829, he continued to visit the area around the Catskill Mountain House and Cloves and produced at least two views of the great resort hotel from Sunset Rock looking south. This particular picture is a dramatic representation of a storm on South Mountain directly above the Mountain House. Note the white form of the building in center left and North and South Lakes on the right.
IMAGE 7.3. Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill—Early Autumn, 1838. Oil on canvas, 39 x 63 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. [BEST COPY IN METROPOLITAN, AMERICAN PARADISE, P. 128]
This painting of the Catskill Creek very near his home was Cole’s homage to the landscape as it had been before the construction of the Catskill and Canajoharie Railroad in 1836. Note the theme of human dwelling peacefully with nature—the rower in the boat, the man chasing his horses in the meadow, the woman gathering wildflowers, her baby resting by the creek bank—all seem symbolic of a harmonious relationship with the landscape.
IMAGE 7.4. Thomas Cole, River in the Catskills, 1843. Oil on canvas, 28 ¼ x 41 ¼ in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [COPY IN ROBINSON, P. 11, CAT. NO. 9]
In contrast to his 1838 version of the same view, Cole now portrays a landscape more modified by human action—the felled trees along the creek, the woodcutter with his ax and, in the middle distance, several cars of the Catskill and Canajoharie Railroad. This painting provides the only surviving image of the financially-troubled railway, which ended operation in 1841.
SIDEBAR FOR IMAGES 7.3 AND 7.4
On April 1, 1841 in Catskill, Cole delivered a “Lecture on American Scenery “ to the Catskill Lyceum. In this talk, which was a revised version of his 1835 “Essay on American Scenery,” Cole described in detail the felling of trees along Catskill Creek because of railroad construction:
Among the inhabitants of this village, he must be dull indeed who has not observed how, within the last ten years, the beauty of its environs has been shorn away; year by year the groves that adorned the banks of the Catskill wasted away; but in one year more fatal than the rest, the whole of that noble grove by Van Vechten’s mill, through which wound what is called the Snake Road, and at the same time the ancient grove of cedar that shadowed the Indian burying-ground were cut down.
I speak of these in particular, because I know that many of you remember them well; they have contributed to your enjoyment as well as mine; their shades were long the favorite walk and ride. After my return from Europe [in 1832], I was proud to speak of that delightful spot, to walk there with my friends, and whenever opportunity offered to take persons of taste to view it, and as we trod the velvet grass beneath those noble trees, and pointed out the distance mountains, and the quiet stream below to say: This is a spot that in Europe would be considered as one of the gems of the earth; it would be sought for by the lovers of the beautiful and protected by law from desecration.
But its beauty is gone, and that which a century cannot restore is cut down; what remains? Steep, arid banks, incapable of cultivation, and seamed by unsightly gullies, formed by the waters which find no resistance in the loamy soil. Where once was beauty, there is now barrenness.
IMAGE 7.5. Unidentified photographer, View from the west porch of Cedar Grove, c. 1900. New York State Library, Albany. [XEROX COPY CURRENTLY AVAILABLE; WILL GET GOOD IMAGE NEXT WEEK]
Even as late as the early 1900s, the view from the west porch of Cedar Grove was spectacular, with houses and farm buildings in the foreground and the striking profile of the Catskills in the distance.
SIDEBAR: THOMAS COLE’S POETRY
Cole regularly wrote poetry, much of which, after 1834, was about scenes and experiences relating to Catskill, Cedar Grove, and the Catskills. Cole wrote the first poem below on the wood backing of a painting he did of Catskill Creek in 1838. The second poem records his distress at trees felled along Catskill Creek.
The valleys rest in shadow and the hum
Of gentle sounds and two toned melodies
Are stilled, and twilight spreads her misty wing
In broader sadness over their happy scene
And creeps along the distant mountain sides
Until the setting sun’s last lingering beams
Wreathe up in golden glorious ring
Around the highest Catskill peak.
1838
And is the glory of the forest dead?
Struck down? Its beauteous foliage spread
On the base earth? O! ruthless was the deed
Destroying man! What demon urg’d the speed
Of thine unpitying axe? Didst thou not know
My heart was wounded by each savage blow?
Could not the liveliness that did begird
These boughs disarm thine hand and save the bird
Its ancient home and me a lasting joy!
Vain is my plaint! All that I love must die.
But death sometimes leaves hope—friends may yet meet
And life be fed on expectation sweet—
But here no hope survives; again shall spread o’er me
Never the gentle shade of my beloved tree—
Catskill, 1834
8. THE VOYAGE OF LIFE [PANEL 8]
The success of The Course of Empire in 1836 provided Cole with several new commissions. The most important of these was The Voyage of Life, a series of paintings requested by New York City banker Samuel Ward, a deeply religious man who, like Luman Reed, had a picture gallery in his New York home. In the four paintings of this series—Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age—Cole depicted the spiritual pilgrim’s path through life, concluding in the final picture with the promise of eternal life.
Cole began work on Childhood in October 1839, in his new carriage-house studio. In November, he was disheartened by the news that Samuel Ward had suddenly died—a situation eerily reminiscent of The Course of Empire and Luman Reed’s unexpected death.
Eventually, however, the Ward family allowed Cole to complete the series, which he did at Cedar Grove by November 1840. Cole then organized a one-man, New York exhibition of the paintings that ran from early December 1840, through mid-January 1841. Overall, the series was highly praised, with one reviewer explaining that “In this work, there is an instance of… art being devoted to its highest objects—to the illustration of the moral truths of objects—to the cultivation of refined sentiments—to the improvement of the heart.”
The Voyage of Life was Cole’s most popular cycle of paintings, partly because its images were easily understood by people of all backgrounds.
IMAGE 8.1. Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Childhood, 1839-40. Oil on canvas, 52 x 78 in. Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. [GOOD COPIES OF ALL FOUR PICTURES IN POWELL, PP. 86ff.]
Whereas The Course of Empire presents the history of entire civilizations, The Voyage of Life speaks to the psychological journey of the spiritual seeker. These paintings are much more personal and melancholy—probably representative of Cole’s private feelings at this time in his life.
As with The Course of Empire, Cole wrote verbal descriptions of each painting. He explains that, in the first painting: “The dark cavern is emblematic of our earthly origin, and the mysterious Past. The Boat, composed of figures of the Hours, images the thought that we are borne on the hours down the Stream of Life…. The rosy light of the morning, the luxuriant flowers and plants, are emblems of the joyousness of early life. The close banks, and the limited scope of the scene, indicate the narrow experience of Childhood, and the nature of its pleasures and desires….”
IMAGE 8.2. Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Youth, 1840. Oil on canvas, 52 ½ x 78 ½ in. Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute.
Cole wrote: “The stream now pursues its course through a landscape of wider scope and more diversified beauty. Trees of rich growth overshadow its banks, and verdant hills form the base of lofty mountains. The Infant of the former scene is become a Youth, on the verge of Manhood. He is now alone in the Boat, and takes the helm himself, and in attitude of confidence and eager expectation, gazes on a cloudy pile of Architecture, an air-built Castle, that rises dome above dome in the far-off blue sky. The Guardian Spirit… seems to be bidding the impetuous voyager ‘God Speed’….”
IMAGE 8.3. Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Manhood, 1840. Oil on canvas, 52 x 78 in. Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute.
“Trouble is characteristic of the period of Manhood…. It is only when experience has taught us the realities of the world, that we lift from our eyes the golden veil of early life; that we feel deep and abiding sorrow; and in the Picture, the gloomy, eclipse-like tone, the conflicting elements, the trees riven by tempest, are the allegory; and the Ocean, dimly seen, figures the end of life, to which the voyager is now approaching….”
IMAGE 8.4. Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Old Age, 1840. Oil on canvas, 51 ¾ x 78 ½ in. Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute.
“The stream of life has now reached the Ocean, to which all life is tending…. The chains of corporeal existence are falling away: and already the mind has glimpses of Immortal Life. The angelic Being, of whose presence until now the voyager has been unconscious, is revealed to him, and with a countenance beaming with joy, shows to his wondering gaze scenes such as the eye of mortal man has never yet seen.”
…our stream of life, in this levelling age, flows over a great extent, and, fretting and rippling over its gravelly shallows, is too often dissipated in the arid atmosphere of the great world.
--Thomas Cole, in a letter of February 1, 1848—ten days before his death
In 1841, Cole again traveled to Europe to revitalize his creative energy. While living in Rome in 1842, he painted a duplicate version of The Voyage of Life. After his return to America in summer 1842, he became more introspective and religious. “Art,” he wrote, “is man’s lowly imitation of the creative power of the Almighty.”
In the last six years of his life, Cole continued to paint both landscapes and allegorical pictures. Most important for Cole personally was his vision of a great religious series entitled “The Cross and the World.” In 1847, he finished the first painting in the sequence and began work on the next two.
Cole would never complete this series. On Friday evening, February 11, 1848, at 8 p.m., after a five-day illness, Cole died of pneumonia in his and Maria’s second-floor bedroom at Cedar Grove. He was forty-seven years old. “My trust is in the Lord” were his last words.
A memorial exhibit of his paintings opened in New York on March 27, 1848, just six-and-a-half weeks after his death. Shortly after, the eminent American poet William Cullen Bryant delivered Cole’s memorial address. Bryant said: “[W]hen I consider with what mastery, yet with what reverence he copied the forms of nature, and how he blended with them the profoundest human sympathies, and made them the vehicle… of great truths and great lessons… I say within myself, this man will be reverenced in future years as a great master of art.”
IMAGES AND CAPTIONS
IMAGE 9.1. Unidentified photographer (attributed to Mathew B. Brady), Portrait of Thomas Cole, c.1845-47. Daguerreotype, 5 3/8 x 4 in. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; gift of Edith Cole Silberstein, 1976. [COPY IN PERRY, 1988, P. 20]
A photograph of Thomas Cole in the last few years before he died.
IMAGE 9.2. Thomas Cole, Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness, 1843. Oil on canvas, 72 3/8 x 57 1/8 in. Worcester Art Museum, Worceser, Massachusetts.
Toward the end of his life, Cole became more and more interested in religious pictures. He claimed that, in this picture of Christ in the wilderness, he had “painted… in a serious spirit, and I hope its effect will be religious.” Originally, this painting was much larger, but Cole afterward cut down its size to reduce the emphasis of the landscape in favor of the figural composition marked by Christ and the angels.
IMAGE 9.3. Thomas Cole, Mount Etna from Taormina, 1843. Oil on canvas, 78 1/8 x 120 5/8 in. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.
After his second trip to Europe, Cole also painted a number of European scenes, including this huge view of Sicily’s Mount Etna from the ruins of a Greek theater.
IMAGE 9.4. Thomas Cole, Home in the Woods, 1847. Oil on canvas, 44 x 66 in. Reynolds House, Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Cole’s last pictures of American themes, including Home in the Woods, indicate a change in his attitude toward nature. Awe has disappeared, and human beings are at ease with a nature that is rapidly becoming domesticated.
9.5. Thomas Cole, Study for The Cross and the World: The Pilgrim of the World on His Journey, c. 1846-47. Oil on canvas, 12 x 18 in. Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, New York.
In 1846, Cole began work on his “The Cross and the World,” which was not a commission but a theme he wanted to paint personally. All that survives of this series today are several preliminary sketches and old photographs of the series’ three finished paintings as they were exhibited in 1872 at the Brooklyn Art Association.
SIDEBAR FOR BOARD 9
In late 1847, Cole was asked to write a brief statement on “the mental and moral habits of the artist” for the New York Art Reunion, a society of young artists. His response was, uncannily, the last letter he penned before his death. Cole wrote:
Genius has but one wing, and, unless sustained on the other side by the well-regulated wing of assiduity, will quickly fall to the ground. An artist should be in the world, but not of it; its cares, its duties he must share with his contemporaries, but he must keep an eye steadfastly fixed upon his polar star, and steer by it whatever wind may blow….
The artist must be exclusive in his enjoyments, in his society, in his reading. He must work always; his eye and mind can work even when his pencil is idle. He must, like a magician, draw a circle around him and exclude all intrusive spirits.
And, above all, if he would attain that serene atmosphere of mind in which float the highest conceptions of the soul, in which the sublimest works have been produced, he must be possessed of a holy and reasonable faith.
10. THE LEGACY OF THOMAS COLE [PANEL 10]
[W]hether he beholds the Hudson mingling waters with the Atlantic—explores the central wilds of this vast continent, or stands on the margin of the distant Oregon, he is still in the midst of American scenery—it is his own land; its beauty, its magnificence, its sublimity—all are his; and how undeserving of such a birthright, if he can turn towards it an unobserving eye, an unaffected heart!
--Thomas Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” 1835
Thomas Cole portrayed the majesty of America’s natural environment. Over time, his work launched a uniquely American style of landscape art that came to be called the “Hudson River School.” Emphasizing nature’s raw beauty, energy, and spiritual mystery, painters such as Frederic E. Church, Asher B. Durand, Jasper F. Cropsey, and Albert Bierstadt provided Americans with a recognizable image of their country and landscape in art.
Like most 19th-century Americans, Cole accepted the inevitability of economic progress and the accompanying changes to the natural environment, sometimes for the worse. He also believed, however, that Americans could learn to appreciate nature and that it was spiritually crucial that they do so because the natural environment, especially wilderness, was an unsullied revelation of God.
Cole felt deeply that the arts, including his paintings, essays, and poetry, could awaken Americans to the sacredness of their natural landscape and perhaps temper thoughtless environmental actions. In this sense, Cole was a forerunner of the modern conservation movement, suggesting that a cultivation of respect for nature would lead to more responsible economic and social progress.
Thirteen years before he died, Cole wrote: “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly.”
IMAGE 10.1. Frederic E. Church, Niagara, 1857. Oil on canvas, 42 ½ x 90 ½ in. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. [COPY IN KELLEY, P. 90]
Cole’s student went on to become a major American landscape painter in his own right. Perhaps Church’s most famous picture was Niagara, a wall-sized painting portraying the swirling power of Niagara Falls with a vivdness never before portrayed two-dimensionally. “It was there before me,” exclaimed one viewer, “the eighth wonder of the world.”
IMAGE 10.2 . Frederic E. Church, The Alexander Thomson House, Outbuildings and Thomas Cole Studio. Pencil on paper, 6 ¾ x 10 ¼ in. New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Olana State Historic Site, Taconic Region.[COPY IN PHILLIPS, P. 65—USE THIS COPY FOR SCANNING?]
A pencil sketch that Church did of Cedar Grove shortly after Cole died. Note Italianate studio on right; white-frame privy in center; and main house on left.
IMAGE 10.3. Peter Aaron, Frederic Church’s Olana, 1998. © Peter Aaron/Esto Phtographics, Mamaroneck, New York. Used with permission.
Frederic Church’s Olana, his home and studio directly across the Hudson from Cedar Grove. On one of their many sketching excursions, Cole took Church to “Red Hill”—the eventual site of his Persian-style house high above the Hudson.
IMAGE 10.4. Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849. Oil on canvas, 46 x36 in. The New York Public Library, New York City. [COPY IN METROPOLITAN, AMERICAN PARADISE, P. 109]
Durand was a close friend of Cole. Originally an engraver, he was encouraged by Cole to turn to landscape painting. With the death of Cole in 1848, Durand was recognized as the leader of American landscape painting until Church gained in stature in the 1850s. Kindred Spirits is probably Durand’s best known work and commemorates the death of Cole, who is engaged in conversation with nature poet William Cullen Bryant against a backdrop of Catskill Mountain scenery. The painting was commissioned by Jonathan Sturges to present to Bryant in appreciation of the eulogy of Cole that Bryant delivered at the National Academy of Design on May 4, 1848.
IMAGE 10.5. Jasper Cropsey, Autumn—On the Hudson River, 1860. Oil on canvas, 60 x 108 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. [IN METROPOLITAN, AMERICAN PARADISE, P. 207]
Probably the most popular of Cropsey’s paintings, Autumn—on the Hudson River established his reputation as the foremost painter of American autumnal scenery. Cropsey eventually resided in Hastings-on-Hudson where his home and studio, named Ever Rest, overlooked the river.
IMAGE 10.6. Jasper F. Cropsey, Drawing of Cedar Grove, 1853. Vedder Research Library, Greene County Historical Society.[IN MCGOWN, FIGURE 4.6]
When he visited Cole’s studio in 1850, Jasper Cropsey wrote his wife: “We entered: It seemed as if Mr. Cole would be in in a few minutes, for everything remains as when he last left painting. The picture he last painted on yet stands on the Easel. The brushes he painted with that last day are there: his paint table looks as when he was there…. Though the man has departed, yet he has left a spell behind him that is not broken, as you may sit there upon the sofa, and look upon his works, [and] feel more than ever the devotion, genius and spirit of the man. Everything breathes so much candor of will, truth of purpose, and love of the refined and beautiful that we feel a kind of reverence there, we instinctively feel like taking off our hats, when we enter, although he is not there.”
IMAGE 10.7 Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Moutains, Lander’s Peak, 1863. Oil on canvas, 73 ½ x 120 ¾ in. The Metorpolitan Museum of Art, New York City. [IN METROPOLITAN, AMERICAN PARADISE, P. 285]
Bierstadt was best known for his large-scale Western landscapes, including this painting first exhibited in New York and then sent on a domestic and international tour. He was among the most industrious and internationally honored American artists of the nineteeth century. He eventually built Malkasen, a magnificent mansion overlooking the Hudson at Irvington-on-Hudson. The structure later burned to the ground.
IMAGE 10.8 Charles Herbert Moore, Thomas Cole’s House (“Cedar Grove”), 1868. Oil on canvas mounted on board, 6 x 9 ¼ in. Collection of Thomas Cole’s Cedar Grove, gift of Edith Cole Silberstein. [COPY IN PHILLIPS, P. 104]
Influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and the aesthetic of the Pre-Raphaelites, artist Charles Herbert Moore lived in Catskill from 1865 until 1871 and rented one of Cole’s Cedar Grove studios (probably in the carriage house) from his son Theodore. During his stay, Moore painted a number of Catskill themes, including High Peak and Round Top (Catskill) in Winter, October Snow Squall—Catskill Mountains, and Leeds Bridge. In the early 1870s, Moore left Catskill to teach at Harvard. He eventually became the first director of the Fogg Museum.
REFERENCES DRAWN UPON IN WRITING PANEL TEXT; THESE WORKS INCLUDE A PUBLISHED VERSION OF IMAGES SUGGESTED FOR PANEL ILLUSTRATIONS
Hudson River Museum, 1982. To Walk with Nature: The Drawings of Thomas Cole (essay by Howard S. Merritt). Yonkers: The Hudson River Museum.
Huntington, David, 1966. The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era. New York: George Braziller.
McGown, Alice L., 1985. Cedar Grove: The Residence of Thomas Cole. New York: Columbia University Master’s Thesis in Historic Preservation.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Myers, Kenneth, 1987. The Catskills: Painters, Writers, and Tourists in the Mountains 1820-1895. Yonkers: Hudson River Museum of Westchester.
Parry, Ellwood C., 1986. Thomas Cole’s Early Career: 1818-1829. In Views and Visions: American Landscape before 1830, Edward J. Nygren, ed. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art (pp. 161-87).
Parry, Ellwood C., 1988. The Art of Thomas Cole: Ambition and Imagination. Newark: University of Delaware Press [a volume in the American Art series].
Philips, Sandra S., 1988. Charmed Places: Hudson River Artists and Their Houses, Studios, and Vistas. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Powell, Earl A., 1990. Thomas Cole. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Robinson, Christine T. (Curator), 1993. Thomas Cole: Drawn to Nature. Albany, NY: Albany Institute of History and Art.
Truettner, William H. & Wallach, Alan, 1994. Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art.
Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane, 1995. The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-Century American Art. Atlanta: Scholars Press [no. 84 in the American Academy of Religion Academy series].
Baigell, Matthew, 1981. Thomas Cole. New York: Watson-Guptill.
Baltimore Museum of Art, 1967. Annual II: Studies on Thomas Cole, an American Romanticist. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art.
Beecher, Raymond, 1980. Cedar Grove—The Thomas Cole Residence, The Crayon, vol. 12, no. 1 (spring, 1980), pp. 1, 5, 6, 7 [newsletter of Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY].
Beecher, Raymond, 1999. The Thomsons of Catskill Landing: An In-Depth Study—Part I, Greene County Historical Journal, vol. 23, no.2 (summer, 1999), pp. 11-20.
Beecher, Raymond, 1999. The Thomsons of Catskill Landing: An In-Depth Study—Part II, Greene County Historical Journal, vol. 23, no.3 (fall, 1999), pp. 21-28.
Cole, Thomas, 1972. Thomas Cole’s Poetry, compiled and edited by Marshall B. Tymn. York, PA: Liberty Cap Books.
D’Agostino, Robert A., 1996. Thomas Cole’s House Was Never Thomas Cole’s House, Greene County Historical Journal, vol. 20, no. 4 (winter, 1996), pp. 31-32, 36-38.
Flexner, James Thomas, 1962. That Wilder Image: The Painting of America’s Native School from Thomas Cole to Winslow Homer. New York: Dover.
Howat, John K., 1972. The Hudson River and Its Painters. New York: Penguin.
Hughes, Robert, 1997. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Huth, Hans, 1957. Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Kelly, Franklin, 1989. Frederic Edwin Church. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art/Smithsonian Institution Press.
Larsen, Betty & D’Agostino Robert A., 1996. Thomas Cole also Designed for Wood, Mortar, and Brick, Greene County Historical Journal, vol. 20, no. 4 (winter, 1996), pp. 33-36.
McNulty, J. Bard, 1983. The Correspondence of Thomas Cole and Daniel Wadsworth. Hartford, CT: The Connecticut Historical Society.
Nash, Roderick, 1967. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Noble, Louis Legrand, 1853. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, edited by Elliot S. Vesell. Hendersonville, New York: Black Dome Press, 1997.
Novak, Barbara, 1969. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Praeger.
Novak, Barbara, 1980. Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Brien, Raymond J., 1981. American Sublime: Landscape and Scenery of the Lower Hudson Valley. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schweizer, Paul D., 1985. The Voyage of Life by Thomas Cole: Paintings, Drawings and Prints. Utica, NY: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute.
National Parks Service, United States Department of the Interior, 1980. Thomas Cole House: Reconnaissance Study. [Boston]: National Parks Service, North Atlantic Office.
National Parks Service, United States Department of the Interior, 1991. Thomas Cole: Suitability/Feasibility Study. Boston: National Parks Service, North Atlantic Regional Office.
Van Zandt, Roland, 1979. The Catskill Mountain House. Cornwallville, NY: Hope Farm Press (1982 edition).
Wadsworth Atheneum, 1949. Thomas Cole, 1801-1848: One Hundred Years Later. Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum.