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The greats outdoors: How Thomas Cole shaped the American landscape

Why Cole’s wounded pride helped inspire a national school of painting.

By Michael Prodger

thomas cole essay on american scenery summary

The origins of what has come to be adopted as the US’s national landscape painting lie not in natural beauty but in wounded pride. In 1829 Captain Basil Hall, an English traveller and veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, published Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828 . The snooty observations it contained – on American life, manners, government and topography – caused a transatlantic furore. Hall’s disobliging comments about the young nation included the suggestions that Americans were spittoon-using parvenus obsessed with money, and that not only were they rough around the edges but their political and cultural institutions were inferior to those of Europe. To add insult to injury, someone who hosted Captain Hall and his wife during their trip recalled that Mrs Hall also “indulged herself in certain criticisms upon the American ladies”.

Those Americans were not a people subject to the cultural cringe or willing to be patronised by a scion of the Old World, and Hall’s book prompted numerous outraged responses in the press and even in books: the sense of hurt continued to sting for a decade. One of Hall’s criticisms, however, bore fruit. “Where the fine arts are not steadily cultivated,” he had observed, “there cannot possibly be much hearty  admiration of the beauties of nature.” This affront to American sensibility was seen as a challenge and one painter in particular took it up.

Ironically, the artist was English-born. Thomas Cole (1801-48) came from Lancashire and moved to the US with his family in 1818. As a naturalised citizen he was instrumental in founding the Hudson River School, a group of landscape painters who took the river valley and its scenes – boatmen and hunters, waterfalls and weather – as their theme, and who formed the nation’s first indigenous school of repute.

In 1836 Cole published his “ Essay on American Scenery”, which was, in part, a riposte to Hall. In it he lauded his adopted land, pointing out that its landscapes offered not just the sublime but also the picturesque and the beautiful – three themes that had been an important part of artistic discourse in Europe since the mid-18th century. What’s more, he said, American landscapes were all the better for not being burdened by associations with ancient civilisations. “You see no ruined tower to tell of outrage,” he wrote, “no gorgeous temple to speak of ostentation; but freedom’s offspring – peace, security and happiness dwell there, the spirits of the scene.” As he hit his stride his prose turned bright purple: “And in looking over the yet uncultivated scene, the mind’s eye may see far into futurity – mighty deeds shall be done in the now pathless wilderness; and poets yet unborn shall sanctify the soil.” One in the eye for the Old World.

thomas cole essay on american scenery summary

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That same year Cole gave a painted rejoinder to Hall too, ponderously titled View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm , but better known as The Oxbow , and now in the Met in New York City. Mount Holyoke was a popular 19th-century tourist destination, some  145km west of Boston, overlooking the Connecticut river, that offered long-reaching views of the New England landscape (even Hall admired its vistas, despite the ginger-beer seller and fake hermit who could be found at the peak). Cole, however, treated it as both a literal and an allegorical place.

He came to the painting in the middle of working on his epic Course of Empire series, which showed the rise, peak and fall of a classical civilisation. His patron, the dry goods plutocrat Luman Reed, saw that work on the five paintings was wearing Cole down and suggested he try something else. Indeed, Cole had previously confessed in his diary that “my mind has been occupied with so many cares & anxieties, sickness of my Mother & Father etc, & so many interruptions that it has not been in proper tone for pursuing my profession”. He felt he was being sidelined by younger painters and that “my best days are passing away without being able to apply talents I possess so entirely to my art as I should wish”.

Cole had made sketches of the view in 1833 and for his painting he conflated a broader panorama and then, on a canvas nearly six feet wide, divided it diagonally in two. In one portion he showed wild nature – a storm tail passing overhead, leaving broken tree trunks and twisted foliage in its wake. In the other portion, beyond the glistening oxbow bend of the river, he showed an American Arcadia, all neatly tended fields, careful husbandry, peace and prosperity. Here is the futurity he spoke of and here, too, the idea of “manifest destiny” made real: Americans could and should tame the wilderness and shepherd it to civilisation.

Cole himself perhaps felt some ambiguity about the relentless recasting of the American landscape. The hill in the background bears logging scars that form the shapes of Hebrew words: one reads “Noah”, the other “Shaddai” – the Almighty. What is not altogether clear in this Eden is whether God is looking down approvingly on man’s work. There may be a boat and a barge on the river and farms on the plain, but there is only one human to be seen; it is a self- portrait of Cole at his easel, almost lost in the foreground undergrowth, as he fixes this moment of national transition in paint.

Cole has painted a series of contrasts: past and future, wild and temperate, innocence and experience, the sublime and the beautiful. There is a sense, too, that he knew how precariously balanced all these  elements were. In his Course of Empire paintings he showed what fate had in store for an overreaching civilisation.

The painting met with great acclaim when it was exhibited and he pocketed a very welcome $500 for his trouble. What it proved, however, was that American artists could depict their own land in ways unbeholden to the European tradition. Intriguingly, X-rays reveal that beneath the paint of The Oxbow lies the outline of a quite different picture, one containing ranks of classical buildings. In making a distinctively American art, Cole quite literally overpainted all traces of the Old World. Basil Hall, meanwhile, suffered mental illness in later life and was confined to an asylum in Plymouth, dying eight years after The Oxbow appeared. 

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This article appears in the 13 May 2020 issue of the New Statesman, Land of confusion

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Art of the Americas to World War I

Course: art of the americas to world war i   >   unit 7.

  • Allston, Elijah in the Desert

Wilderness, settlement, and American identity

  • Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
  • Thomas Cole, The Oxbow
  • Cole's The Oxbow
  • Hicks' The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable
  • Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas
  • It's not only about the American Revolution, Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware
  • Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware
  • Jasper Francis Cropsey, Mount Jefferson, Pinkham Notch, White Mountains
  • Picturing Spanish conquest in an era of U.S. expansion
  • Revisiting a frozen sea
  • Envisioning Manifest Destiny, Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire
  • The painting that inspired a National Park
  • Church, Niagara and Heart of the Andes
  • Science, religion, and politics, Church's Cotopaxi
  • Lane, Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine
  • Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite, and the battle for National Parks
  • A dream of Italy: Black artists and travel in the nineteenth century
  • Romanticism in the United States

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Video transcript

Early American Lit and Culture, Fall 2014

A middlebury blog, thomas cole.

Why does Cole think it is important to observe and paint American scenery? How does he think nature and humans should interact? How does one painting depict (or fail to depict) the ideals he discusses in his essay?

9 thoughts on “ Thomas Cole ”

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As others have noted, Cole places much emphasis on the exceptionalism of the untouched American landscape, where one can witness “the sublime melting into the beautiful.” He praises the deeply emotional and spiritual connection that such scenery encourages, for it is not symbolic of man’s history, but of a solely divinely altered past. Interestingly, far from encouraging the preservation of this unadulterated landscape, Cole states that the “cultivated state of our western world is fast approaching,” without suggestion of a call to action to prevent it. In this way, Cole’s Course of Empire paintings seem to suggest a necessary path dependency of the building of civilization that America will soon follow. He does not however, see the ruin of such as inevitable. While Cole’s hope for the future does not appear to be in natural preservation, he instead seeks to build American “historical and legendary associations” through newly manipulated landscape that are marked not by destruction or desolation, as Europe has been, but instead by “peace, security and happiness.”

Thomas Cole makes many points about why American scenery should be recorded. His opening point about the American landscape is that the land belongs to everyone. No matter if you are looking on the river or in the mountains, the American Landscape is the land of Americans. Cole writes, “For wether 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” (98). The beauty and magnificence of the land belongs to the American people, and they should embrace it. Cole does not discredit the beauty of European lands, he simply acknowledges that the two sceneries are different. The lands of Europe lack the primitiveness and untouched forests and landscapes, whereas American scenery remains untouched. I especially like when Cole mentions the “one season when the American forest surpasses all the world in gorgeousness – that is the autumnal; then every hill and dale is riant in the luxury of color”. Cole is admirable about the landscape and highlights many points about the value of the American landscape in art. The painting “Daniel Boone and His Cabin”, depicts Cole’s exact thoughts about the American Landscape. Boone is sitting at his home and behind him is a vast and unexplored landscape of grand mountains and deep waters. This type of scene would not exist in Europe anymore.

Thomas Cole views American scenery as a source of joy and consolation. He writes of the tranquility, peace and transparency of water as well as other beautifiers of the earth including the forest scenery, hills, and sky. He challenges those that view American scenery as inferior to European scenery by asserting that it has magnificent features no longer present in Europe. He writes that features such as “extensive forests, felled-rugged mountains, tangled wood, and turbulent brooks” – features abundant in American scenery – no longer exist in Europe due its “cultivated state”and consequently take away from its magnificence (102). Cole believes that humans should view nature as an “escape from the ordinary pursuits of life” and as a place for emotional reflection and enjoyment (109).

I disagree with the general assertion of the previous comments that Cole believes Americans should consider the wild landscape greater than themselves, and work to preserve it just for its own sake. In my view, Cole’s primary appreciation of wilderness is for its impact on the American consciousness, and the way in which interaction with one’s environment can lead to the formation of a new national ethic. This ethic, embodied by frontier men like Daniel Boone, is what serves to radically distinguish America from its European roots, providing the seed of the concept of “American exceptionalism” (“the theory that the United States is qualitatively different from other nation states” –Wikipedia) that is still ubiquitous in American politics and culture.

Though European observers may look view American scenery as “less fashionable and unframed” (101), they overlook the land’s “unbounded capacity for improvement by art” (106). These artificial improvements are desirable because they will be a reflection of the people that will carve out a new nation in the wilderness. One of the huge differences between European and American landscapes is the “want of associations” (108) that stems from America’s comparatively short history as a “civilized nation.” Cole may believe nature can be sublime on its own, but he also writes that “he who stands on the mounds of the West…may experience the emotion of the sublime, but it is the sublimity of the shoreless ocean un-islanded by the recorded deeds of man” (ibid.). Already, Cole looks for ways in which the landscape has been “sanctified,” or made more meaningful by some important human deed, and he finds ample sanctification in the memory of the Revolution, which also goes hand-in-hand with the notion of exceptionalism. One might argue that Cole decries artificial corruption of the wilderness when he laments the “ravages of the axe” (109), but as the painter himself notes, “this is a regret rather than a complaint” (ibid.), because such actions are necessary for the advance of society. He hopes that nature’s beauty is not mindlessly destroyed and left desolate, but rather artfully cultivated in the name of taste. While it is arguable that Cole would like to see large tracts of land preserved for the sake of their aesthetic/spiritual beauty, he gives at least equal weight to the wilderness as blank canvas that will inspire the unfolding drama of American nationhood.

Cole thinks it is important to observe and paint American scenery, rural nature, because one becomes awakened to the deeper feeling of the works of God and the beauty of one’s existence in America. Cole believes that the observation of scenery is a source of delight and improvement for man. He believes that while looking upon the work of God, one “feels a calm religious tone seal through his mind, and when he has turned to mingle with his fellow men, the chords have been struck in that sweet communion cease not to vibrate” (100). Also, Cole speaks to those with a prejudice of pro-European scenery from reading. This is another reason why Cole believes in the power of observing scenery. He believes that these ignorant people have never had their eyes opened to the beauties of God’s creation, and they have not found pleasure in the beauty of rural earth before the beauty faded from the sight and was closed forever.

The exceptionalism of American nature, Cole believes, is its wilderness, which though approaching levels of English civilization still possesses a distance from humankind’s touch that allows for more significant spiritual and emotional reflection. Citing widespread forests, crystalline rivers and majestic mountains which implicitly invoke the wonder of God’s creation to the viewer, Cole notes every American’s birthright and duty to revel in their unique landscape. Perception of American nature through poetry and painting creates an “intellectual enjoyment,” “deeper feeling,” and “keener perception” of the world for the viewer, and Cole warns against the distractions of utilitarianism and increasingly popular man made creations like fashion, arguing that the simple contemplation of scenery delights and improves the mind in a way that extends to every facet of life, therefore improving the benevolence of men and the conditions of society. Painting, then, is a method of preserving this American wilderness and allowing future generations to experience the spiritual and emotional benefits of viewing a natural world which Cole knows may change rapidly over time. The future road to refinement, Cole believes, is paved with “improvements” that will forever alter the current landscape of the wilderness. In a painting like Home in the Woods, Cole immortalizes an unrippled lake in which “the reflections of surrounding objects, trees, mountains, sky, are most perfect in the clearest water,” also featuring a lush American forest and formidable mountain range in the background. Most importantly, Cole paints a modest cabin and family living in harmony with the natural splendor, perhaps suggesting to the viewer that this lifestyle – not that of the wealthy or most ‘civilized’ – will most easily lead to enlightenment and social peace.

Cole believes it is important to paint American scenery because he views it as importantly distinct from European landscape and that it offers a glimpse of the human condition compared to the vastness of everything else created by God’s hand. He proposes that being alone in nature, especially the untamed, magnificent, and ‘sublime’ landscape of the (at the time) significantly less developed American wilderness can equate to a kind of religious experience. He asserts that experiencing and comprehending the immense and diverse aspects of beauty that characterize American scenery is an important step for those with “unobserving eyes” and “unaffected hearts” to actually deserve a place surrounded by such overwhelmingly awe-inspiring sights. He cherishes the fact that American landscapes have not been tamed and developed to the extent of European land, insinuating that humans should work to preserve in some way the natural sublimity of the American wilderness. However he also notes the pleasant character of cultivated landscapes as well, revealing a complexity about his attitude regarding tamed versus untamed land. The first two paintings of his Course of Empire aptly represent how Cole renders nature’s beauty in depictions of both wilderness and pastoral lands.

Cole has a very spiritual relationship with nature. Cole said that, “the wilderness is yet a fitting place to speak of God.” Observing and painting American scenery is so important to Cole because he believes that American scenery is an illimitable subject and that Americans are undeserving of it if they do not worship it (painting is very spiritual/a form of worship to Cole).

Thomas Cole sees American scenery as something to be revered with the upmost respect. He worries that people take for granted the earth and its beauty. It is most beautiful when it runs wild, unimpeded by the human race. He discusses the mountains, the waterways, and the forests. While some say it lacks the picturesque qualities of the European landscape, Thomas Cole believes it holds beauties, the likes of which even Europe does not have. Thomas Cole uses the earth and its beauty almost as though it is a metaphor for the people who inhabit it. Although many think it is not attractive in the ways of Europe, he believes its diversity makes it special in ways Europe could never be. From the wilderness to the more cultivated grounds, American scenery finds its greatest appeal in the many ways in which it represents itself. In his painting, “Daniel Boone and His Cabin,” Cole depicts his beliefs in summation. With the heavens shining down warm light from above and the mountains, woods, and lake all melding into one glorious scene, man sits to appreciate the splendor around him. Man does not wish to destroy the majesty, only to become part of it, part of the greater beauty.

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Wilderness, settlement, American identity

Cole feared for the American landscape as his country expanded westward

Test your knowledge with a quiz

Cole, hunter's return.

  • White Americans used the concept of Manifest Destiny to justify the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century. Increased white settlement and industry transformed the landscape of the American frontier.
  • Cole sought to represent the sublime grandeur of the American landscape. The painting represents his conflicted feelings over the inevitable loss of wilderness that accompanied economic development.
  • Cole was one of the first environmentalists. He shared the notion, popular in the early 19th century, that God’s divine presence was embodied in nature, and saw the American wilderness as central to the nation’s identity.
  • Cole is credited as the founder of the Hudson River School , which is often described as the first style of painting to be considered American.

“The seemingly untouched quality of the nation’s wilderness distinguished the United States from Europe. The landscape came increasingly to embody what Americans most valued in themselves: an “unstoried” past, and “Adamic” freedom, an openness to the future, a fresh lease on life. In time, Americans came to think of themselves as “nature’s nation.” And yet one of the paradoxes of American history…lay in the unresolved tension between the subduing of the wilderness and the honoring of it. The tension is still alive with us today, in the competing voices of environmentalists and advocates of development.”

— Angela L. Miller, Janet Catherine Berlo, Bryan J. Wolf, and Jennifer L. Roberts,  American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity  (Washington University Libraries, 2018), p. 24 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

An unresolved tension

For much of the nineteenth century, America’s landscape was intimately connected with the nation’s identity (unlike Europe, nature in North America was seen as untouched by the hand of man). But the United States has also always prided itself on its entrepreneurial spirit, its economic progress, and its industry. This tension between the nation’s natural beauty and the inevitable expansion of industry was clearly felt in the mid-nineteenth century as logging, mining, railroads, and factories were quickly diminishing what once seemed an endless wilderness. Thomas Cole (1801-48) beautifully expressed the tension between these two American ideals in many of his landscape paintings.

Thomas Jefferson had envisioned that American democracy would be sustained by a nation of yeoman farmers who worked small farms with their families—such as the household pictured by Cole. By the end of 19th century, however, manufacturing had became a primary driver of the American economy.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 linked midwestern farms with cities on the east coast. Tanneries (where animal hides were processed to make leather using tannin, which was derived from hemlock trees) proliferated and lumber merchants deforested the landscape. As many as 70 million eastern hemlock trees were cut down to provide tannin. Beginning in the 1830s, the railroad had begun to cut across the American landscape, allowing for easier transportation of goods and passengers.

As the east coast grew increasingly populous and developed, more people moved westward in search of economic opportunity. The Homestead Acts were a series of laws enacted in 1862 to provide 160-acre lots of land at low cost, to encourage settlers to move west, answering Manifest Destiny’s [popup] call for westward expansion (the term was coined in 1845, the year this painting was made). Importantly, the popular conception of the west as unspoiled territory ignored the many nations of American Indians who had already settled the North American continent.

Cole’s painting

Though Cole’s The Hunter’s Return  features human figures, it was seen as a landscape painting, since nature is dominant. In the art academies of Europe landscapes were not accorded the same respect as history paintings (whose subjects came from history, the bible or mythology, and therefore had clear moral elements and treated noble subjects), but Cole was intent on elevating his landscapes by imbuing them with a more serious message.

At first glance, a viewer might assume that this painting is set in the Catskill Mountains in the Hudson River Valley in New York State where Cole lived and painted, but in fact this painting is a composite of many scenes, and promotes a specific point of view—one that is ambivalent about the ways that Americans were rapidly transforming the natural beauty that was so fundamental to the nation’s understanding of itself. The foreground of the painting juxtaposes the tree stumps left by man’s axe against the more pristine wilderness seen in the middle and background of the painting.

Cole’s image then is not real, but nostalgic. The artist gave voice to the longing for a pristine, pre-industrial America. Cole wrote,

“I cannot but express my sorrow that the beauty of such landscapes are quickly passing away. The ravages of the axe are daily increasing. The most noble scenes are made desolate, and oftentimes with a wantonness and barbarism scarcely credible in a civilized nation. This is a regret rather than a complaint. Such is the road society has to travel.” — Thomas Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” The American Monthly Magazine , vol. 7, January 1836, p. 12 .

Learn more about this painting from the Amon Carter Museum

Who was Thomas Cole?

Read Thomas Cole’s “An Essay on American Scenery”

Learn about Cole and the other painters in the Hudson River School

Learn about the impact of tanneries on the landscape of the Catskill mountains

How did the Erie canal impact the development of the midwest?

More to think about

Compare Cole’s The Hunter’s Return with John Gast’s American Progress.  Discuss how these works suggest different perspectives on westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century.

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  • Theme: National Identity
  • Period: 1800 - 1848
  • Topic: The frontier, Manifest Destiny, and the American West

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  • Thomas Cole, The Hunter's Return

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thomas cole essay on american scenery summary

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Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole Photo

British-American Painter

Thomas Cole

Summary of Thomas Cole

The paintings of Thomas Cole, like the writings of his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson , stand as monuments to the dreams and anxieties of the fledgling American nation during the mid-19th century; and they are also euphoric celebrations of its natural landscapes. Born in the industrial north-west of England, Cole moved to the United States as a young man, and from that point onwards sought to capture in paint the sublime beauty of the American wilderness. He is considered the first artist to bring the eye of a European Romantic landscape painter to those environments, but also a figure whose idealism and religious sensibilities expressed a uniquely American spirit. Indeed, despite his upbringing in Britain - or perhaps because that upbringing gave him a fresh perspective - his work continues to resonate as an exemplar of that spirit in the modern day.

Accomplishments

  • No one before Thomas Cole had applied the motifs and techniques of European Romantic landscape painting to the scenery of North America. In his works, we find the dramatic splendor of Caspar David Freidrich or J.M.W Turner transposed onto the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains. But whereas younger American painters such as Albert Bierstadt had come into direct contact with The Düsseldorf School of painting, and thus with the tradition in which they placed themselves, Cole was largely self-tutored, representing something of the archetypal American figure of the auto-didact.
  • Thomas Cole is seen as the founding father of the Hudson River School , a group of American artists who sought to depict the untainted majesty of the American landscape, particularly that located around the Hudson River Valley in New York State. Cole was the first to explore this territory, taking steamboat trips up the valley from the mid-1820s onwards, and his work became a touchstone for a whole generation of American artists including Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, and Asher Brown Durand.
  • In many ways, Cole's art epitomizes all contradictions of European settler culture in America. He was in love with the sublime wildness of the American landscape, and sought to preserve it with his art, but his very presence in that landscape, and the development of his career, depended on the processes of urbanization and civilization which threatened it. From a modern perspective, Cole's Eurocentric gaze on seemingly empty wildernesses which had, in fact, been populated for centuries, also seems troubling; where Native Americans do appear in his work, as in Falls of the Kaaterskill (1826), it is as picturesque flecks rather than characterized participants in the scene.
  • Cole's paintings often serve as warnings about the destructive course of human civilization, offering portents of the devastation of the natural world, and the ceaseless spread of industry, which the American project seemed to represent. A deeply religious man, Cole saw these processes as transgressing God's will in some way, and various of his works imply that a moment of judgement or catastrophe might be imminent.

Important Art by Thomas Cole

Lake with Dead Trees (Catskill) (1825)

Lake with Dead Trees (Catskill)

Lake with Dead Trees is one of Cole's earliest works depicting the landscapes of the Catskill Mountains in south-east New York State. At the edge of a motionless lake, surrounded by dead trees, two deer are roused into action: one is poised and alert, the other leaps skittishly off to the right. Behind the dark wooded peaks sunlight streams through a cloudy sky. Interpreted as a meditation on the nature of life, death, and the passage of time, this was one of five paintings exhibited in New York City in November 1825 on Cole's return from his first major trip along the Hudson Valley. Their acclaim amongst his contemporaries helped to ground his reputation as a painter of the American wilds; the writer William Dunlap purchased this piece, and published several articles praising Cole's self-taught painting techniques. Cole's career was advanced further around this time when he met the Baltimore collector Robert Gilmor Jr., who would become an important patron to the artist. In terms of Cole's development as a painter, this image of untamed nature marks the start of his engagement with the Hudson River Valley as a source of inspiration. He once observed that "the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wilderness", and, for the first time in North-American art, Cole brought the impulses of a European Romantic landscape painter to bear on that wilderness: compare this painting to the work of Caspar David Friedrich, for example. Indeed, of all the Hudson River School artists, Cole was the most interested in conveying the Northern-European Romantic concept of the Sublime, whereby the viewer loses themself in the perception of a landscape whose scale and beauty are both inspiring and fearful.

Oil on canvas - Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio

Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1827-28)

Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

This painting depicts the moment in the Book of Genesis when God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Rather than focusing on the naked humanity of the couple, however, Cole dwarfs them within a natural setting whose scale and majesty symbolize heavenly power. Counterintuitively, the painting should be read from right to left, since the Garden of Eden was traditionally located in the east: from where fierce shards of light seem to forcibly evacuate the couple. The surrounding landscape is highly allegorical, a visual expression of Pathetic Fallacy, with the bright, cloudless skies of Eden offset against the brooding, stormy skies to the right. This relatively early work exemplifies Cole's interest in religious themes, and his desire to equate the unspoiled beauty of the American landscape with the manifestation of God's will. If works such as Lake with Dead Trees indicate the Romantic infusion in Cole's painting style, this work shows his affinity with the allegorical, Neoclassical landscape works of 17th-century European painters such as Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet. Rather than depicting a version of a real landscape, in this case an imaginative landscape based on the American wilds forms the backdrop for a scene from mythical antiquity, each element of which is highly symbolically loaded. The framing and miniaturization of human activity within that larger scene is reminiscent of Neoclassical landscapes such as Nicholas Poussin's Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake (1648). Expulsion from the Garden of Eden and similar works were not well-received when they debuted, perhaps because the American public was not yet ready to embrace Cole's apparent departure from the Romantic landscape style for which he was already well-known. This painting was also criticized by some commentators as being too similar to an engraving produced by John Martin for an edition of Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Nonetheless, the painting demonstrates the breadth of Cole's historical influences, and was revealing in bringing to the surface the significant religious undercurrent in his work. Cole would return to religious painting towards the end of his life after joining the Episcopal Church.

Oil on canvas - Collection of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

The Consummation of Empire (1836)

The Consummation of Empire

The Consummation of Empire is one of a sequence of five paintings entitled The Course of Empire commissioned by Cole's patron Luman Reed, created between 1833 and 1836. Each painting in the series depicts the same landscape at a different stage of the rise and fall of an imaginary civilization. This, the middle painting in the series, represents the apparent triumph of that civilization, a scene crammed with classical porticos, rotundas and statuary, with a happy, colorful procession of citizens passing over the bridge in the centre. A statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, stands to the right, but seems to be ignored by the hordes beneath. In fact, the whole series was intended to serve as a warning about the over-weaning ambitions of Empire. Even this painting, which seems to depict that empire at the height of its power, anticipates its demise in the representation of a militaristic ruler carried aloft by the citizens. Later paintings in the sequence show the ruin of the city, and its eventual reclamation by nature, which in this image seems entirely subdued (as represented by the potted plant in the foreground). Anxious to create an epic series of paintings, and inspired by the Neoclassical masterpieces he had seen firsthand during his travels in Europe in 1829-32, Cole nonetheless showed his unique ability through The Course of Empire to capture the American spirit in his work. These paintings sound a note of both triumph - America had recently liberated itself from the British Empire - and caution: that the new state should not fall into the same traps as its European predecessors. More than that, the series seems to express Cole's anxiety about the encroaching threat of industry and urban expansion to the American landscape. The art historian Earl A. Powell sums up the cultural significance of Cole's series in stating that "[i]n its totality, The Course of Empire represents a truly heroic moment both in Cole's career and in the history of American painting. It was a paradigm of the Romantic spirit - melancholy, grand in conceptual scope, and didactic and moralizing - and it succeeded in delighting its audience." The Course of Empire shows an artist at the height of his powers, whose grand scope summed up the spirit of a nation.

Oil on canvas - The New-York Historical Society

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (1836)

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm

Usually referred to as The Oxbow , this painting shows two very different aspects of the American landscape. To the left of the canvas, dense grey clouds hang over a forest of green trees; to the right, the Connecticut River meanders gently through cultivated fields under a blue sky. A key painting in Cole's oeuvre, and arguably his best-known work, The Oxbow was created at a time when Cole was largely occupied with his Course of Empire series; his patron Luman Reed had advised him to take a break from that series, as Cole seemed to be showing signs of depression, and to return to the genre of Romantic landscape painting which he loved most of all. Whereas The Course of Empire stands as a stark warning on the fate of civilization, this painting presents a more complex, though still polemical, statement on the potential direction of American society. The uncultivated landscape to the left is at once threatening and enticing, while the cultivated land to the right presents an equivocal image of security, complicated by the presence of scar-lines in the forest on the far hills: signs of the aggressive over-husbandry of the land. Debate exists as to whether a written message can be made out in these marks, with some scholars believing that the lines were intended to spell out the word "Noah" in Hebrew, and would, from the aerial perspective of God, read "Shaddai" or "The Almighty". If that reading is accepted, then the landscape - which, after all, shows a floodplain - stands for the hubris of human society awaiting the cleansing force of divine judgement. Cole personalized the work by depicting himself at the center of the canvas. Gazing back at the viewer from between two crags, the minute figure of the artist preserves the landscape on his canvas before it is lost, and, perhaps, invites our own judgement on the scene. This personal element reflects Cole's feeling of emotional connection to the work, which now stands as one of the most quintessential examples of mid-19th-century North American landscape painting.

Oil on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Voyage of Life: Youth (1840)

The Voyage of Life: Youth

This work shows a young man rowing a boat down a tree-lined river, towards a ghostly white palace in the sky; on the shore to the left, a guardian angel watches over him, offering him protection on his journey. This is the second in a series of four paintings completed by Cole during 1842 depicting the various stage of man's allegorical journey through life. The other three represent childhood, manhood and old age, with compositional elements and motifs such as the boat, the river, and the angel recurring throughout. The four stages of human life are reflected in the passage of the seasons across the paintings, nature serving as a mirror for man's emotional condition, in quintessential Romantic style. The Voyage of Life was commissioned by the banker Samuel Ward, and was meant to remind the viewer of the course that must be steered to secure a resting place in eternity. In so doing, these works tap into the cultural mood in America during the 1840s, when a period of intense religious revivalism was underway. At the same time, the 'voyage of life' may be read as an allegory for the progress of American civilization, which was, at this time, in a promising but uncertain stage of its growth. The compositional style exemplifies Cole's approach in combining rugged, American-style landscapes with motifs and techniques borrowed from European landscape painting in both the Neoclassical and Romantic styles. So popular were the Voyage of Life paintings that they became a source of dispute between Cole, who wanted to keep them on public display, and his patron Samuel Ward, who wanted to keep them for his own private collection, even refusing to sell the paintings back to the artist. In the end, Cole created a second version of the series while visiting Europe in 1842. On a personal note, he had converted to the Episcopal Church in 1941, and these paintings are the best example of the religiously allegorical work which he produced during the last years of his life. Their place and significance within his oeuvre was summed up by William Cullen Bryant during his speech at Cole's funeral, when he described them as "of simpler and less elaborate design than The Course of Empire , but more purely imaginative. The conception of the series is a perfect poem."

Oil on canvas - The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York

The Architect's Dream (1840)

The Architect's Dream

As its title might suggest, the focal point of this painting is the young architect resting on a pile of books in the foreground, atop a classical column. Carved in the column is the dedication "Painted by T. Cole, For I. Town Arch, 1840", indicating the work's creation for the prominent American architect and engineer Ithiel Town. The rest of the canvas is filled with grand architectural monuments, including a vast Greco-Roman portico, a pyramid shrouded in mist in the background, and a medieval cathedral to the left. This work represents something of a stylistic departure for Cole, in that the natural landscape is not the primary focus. Offering instead a celebration of the history of architecture, Cole presents the young protagonist - presumably based on Town - admiring the great works of the past, implicitly suggesting that the American state, with the help of pioneers such as Town, might inherit and build on the cultural traditions which those works represent. Discussing this aspect of the painting the art historian Matthew Baigell states that "the architect, like the artist, fulfilled his function in society by calling to mind the highest achievements of the past as a way to guide society through the present and into the future. Such a point of view suggests a specific interpretation of the concept of Manifest Destiny - that America might become the new Rome, an improved version of European civilization, rather than a promised land for the chosen people, a new civilization separate and distinct from Europe." This painting also reflects Cole's own interest in, and occasional practice of, architecture: in 1938 he entered a competition to design the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, and he produced similar sketches and plans throughout his life. In this sense, the work, like the early portraits which Cole also composed, represents an element of his creative practice which is occasionally forgotten because of the central importance granted to his landscape works.

Oil on canvas - Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

The Pic-Nic (1846)

The Pic-Nic

This painting depicts an idyllic scene of outdoor leisure activity, set amongst a glade of trees. To the left, a group of figures sits listening a man playing a guitar. Other, smaller clusters of people seem to have broken off from the central group, and sit on blankets eating and talking. On the lake in the background, a boat is rowed to the shore. Painted during the last years of the artist's life, this work is one of several created by Cole which present a very different aspect of the American landscape to the desolate wildernesses explored earlier in his career: the wild landscape has been tamed, converted into a picnic site. In one sense, this seems to imply an earnest celebration of the harmonious interaction of human activity and the natural environment; the scene has something of the quality of the Arcadian landscapes depicted in 16th-century Neoclassical painting. At the same time, features such as the hacked-off tree-stump in the foreground suggest a more ironic or resigned attitude to the presence of humankind amongst the wilderness. Certainly, the notion of the Sublime is no longer conveyed, and the work has a more composed, narrative quality than Cole's earlier landscape works. As a man who felt that "art, in its true sense, is, in fact, man's lowly imitation of the creative power of the Almighty," Cole must have struggled to come to terms with the progress of American society responsible for this kind of order. Indeed, it may have been his sense of the inevitable loss of his beloved wilderness that drew him deeper into his faith in the years before his death.

Oil on canvas - The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York

Biography of Thomas Cole

Childhood and education.

Raised in Bolton-le-Moors, Thomas was the only boy amongst the eight children born to parents Mary and James Cole. His father was a woolen manufacturer who often moved the family around during Thomas's childhood, in search of better employment. This peripatetic lifestyle provided various opportunities for the young artist, including an apprenticeship in a printshop in Chorley at the age of fourteen, where he learned how to engrave designs for calico fabrics, and a period of work as an engraver in Liverpool during 1817. Cole developed a love of nature in his youth, and would often take walks with his sister Sarah to admire the landscapes of the north of England.

Early Training

Cole developed an early interest in North America through his reading, which would serve him well when the family relocated there in 1818. Still a teenager, Thomas initially remained in Philadelphia while the family moved on to Ohio; it was in Philadelphia that, in addition to working as a textile designer, he received an early commission to engrave illustrations for a new edition of the seventeenth-century puritan John Bunyan's book Holy War (1682). After a brief trip to the West Indies in 1819, Cole moved to Ohio to be near his family, and to help with the wallpaper business which his father had established. He studied painting for the first time, and was commissioned to create various portraits and landscapes.

thomas cole essay on american scenery summary

In 1823, Cole returned to Philadelphia, attending classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Two years later, ready to start a formal artistic career, he moved to New York; once he had settled in the city, he began to take trips along the Hudson River Valley to paint the American wilderness. The young artist felt an immediate sense of communion with the landscape of the area, which would remain with him throughout his life. The work which he created from this point onwards became the touchstone for the movement in Romantic landscape painting known as the Hudson River School. His own aims for that work are summed up in a poem from 1825, "The Wild":

Friends of my heart, lovers of nature's works, Let me transport you to those wild, blue mountains That rear their summits near the Hudson's wave [...]

He hoped that his depictions of the "blue mountains" of the Catskills might grant his viewers "a sweet foretaste of heaven". But Cole was under no illusions as to threats facing this heavenly landscape: even on his first trips up the Hudson, he would have encountered signs of industry - sawmills, tanneries, burned-over fields - amongst the beauty.

Mature Period

Cole's career received a major boost in 1825 when he sold paintings to two of the most prominent artists of the day, Asher Brown Durand and John Trumbull , and to the influential writer and historian William Dunlap. The following year, Cole was elected to the National Academy of Design, where he often exhibited.

Like all white American artists of the period, Cole's cultural background was European, and he felt it necessary to study the great masters of the Classical and Renaissance traditions to perfect his craft. So, in the summer of 1829, he set off on an extended tour of Europe, making a trip to the Niagara Falls just before leaving. As the artist put it, "I cannot think of going to Europe without having seen them. I wish to take 'a last lingering look' at our wild scenery. I shall endeavor to impress its features so strongly on my mind that in the midst of the fine scenery of other countries their grand and beautiful peculiarities shall not be erased." By the time of his trip, Cole's reputation as a landscape painter was already firmly established in his adopted country, to the extent that his friend, William Cullen Bryant, wrote a poem in honor of him just before his departure, entitled "To Cole, The Painter, Departing for Europe". In it, the author begs the artist not to forget the beauty of the New World amongst the wonders of European art history.

Cole learned much from his European visit, and was able to meet the English Romantic landscape painters John Constable and J M. W. Turner, as well as the portraitist Thomas Lawrence; the art historian Matthew Baigell suggests that Turner's cityscapes subsequently influenced the composition of Cole's Course of Empire series. He also showed his work in various exhibitions while abroad. Notably, while he was considered a progressive figure in America, he was reluctant to embrace some of the more radical stylistic developments evident in his British compatriots' work, in particular that of Turner, whom he felt focused too much attention on impressions of color and light. It was his time in Italy that Cole enjoyed most, stating: "I am not surprised that the Italian masters have painted so admirably as they have: Nature in celestial attire was their teacher."

Cole's return from Europe in November 1832 heralded the start of an important phase of development in his artistic career and in his personal life. In 1833, he met his future patron Luman Reed, for whom he began work on an iconic series of paintings entitled The Course of the Empire (1836). The same year, he married Maria Bartow, the niece of a farm-proprietor from whom Cole was renting a studio in Catskill, New York while he worked on the series. The couple decided to move permanently to Catskill, whose surrounding landscapes were a rich source of inspiration for Cole. It was there, in 1835, that he wrote his influential "Essay on American Scenery", which considers the encroaching threat of industrial development to the natural world: "there are those who regret that with the improvements of cultivation the sublimity of the wilderness should pass away: for those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched."

Late Period

Daguerreotype of Thomas Cole

The later years of Thomas Cole's career were ones of reflection and frequent sadness. He was deeply troubled by the onward march of urbanization and industrialization that seemed to threaten the American wilderness; he is said to have despised cities, finding, as Matthew Baigell puts it, "a presentiment of evil in them". Cole's paintings, meanwhile, still depicting the landscape, increasingly seemed to become vehicles for him to address issues such as the passage of time and history, as in his Voyage of Life (1842) series.

Cole was also suffering from a period of ill health, and in the summer of 1841, he decided to travel once more to Europe. Upon his return to New York a year later, he joined the Episcopal Church, and from this point onwards religion would play an increasingly central role in his life. Of the influence of spirituality on art he stated: "Art, in its true sense, is, in fact, man's lowly imitation of the creative power of the Almighty." In 1844, he agreed to take Frederic Edwin Church on as a pupil. This was a fortuitous decision, as Cole would greatly influence the young artist's work, through which the legacy of the Hudson River School, and of Cole's painting in particular, was ensured.

During the summer of 1847, perhaps longing once more for a glimpse of untainted nature, Cole traveled again to the Niagara Falls. This would prove to be his last major expedition, as he died in February the following year at the age of forty-seven. Summing up the power of Cole's work, his friend the author William Cullen Bryant stated in a eulogy delivered at the artist's funeral that "[t]he paintings of Cole are of that nature that it hardly transcends the proper use of language to call them acts of religion."

The Legacy of Thomas Cole

thomas cole essay on american scenery summary

While Romantic landscape painting was a firmly-established tradition in Europe by the early 19th century, Thomas Cole was the first artist to forge a version of that style centered on, and inspired by, the North-American landscape. In so doing, he effectively laid the foundations for the entire style of Romantic painting in North America. He is also considered the father of the Hudson River School, despite never specifically aligning himself with that or any other group. Cole's legacy is evident in the work of future American artists who advanced the Hudson River style, including his student Frederic Edwin Church , Albert Bierstadt , Jasper Cropsey , Asher B. Durand , George Inness , John Kensett , and Thomas Moran .

Speaking more broadly, a whole sweep of 20th-century North-American art, from Precisionism to Land Art , might be seen to have inherited something of the grand scale and ambition of Cole's work. In this sense, his paintings capture not only the character of American culture during the mid-19th century, but perhaps something more enduring about the open and expansive quality of that culture.

Influences and Connections

Claude Lorrain

Useful Resources on Thomas Cole

  • Thomas Cole Our Pick By Earl A. Powell
  • Thomas Cole By William H. Wallach, Allan Truettner
  • The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision By New-York Historical Society, Linda S. Ferber
  • Thomas Cole Our Pick By Matthew Baigell
  • Thomas Cole: The Artist as Architect By Annette Blaugrund and Franklin Kelly
  • Thomas Cole National Historic Site Our Pick Official website of the historical site featuring Thomas Cole's home and studio in Catskill, New York.
  • Unknown Thomas Cole Paintings Found at His Home The New York Times / July 1, 2015
  • OPEN HOUSE: Jason Middlebrook and Thomas Cole In this video artist Jason Middlebrook discusses his 2016 series of works inspired by the paintings of Thomas Cole and created specifically to be installed in Cole's home at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site
  • Thomas Cole National Historic Site This video discusses the art and life of Thomas Cole and the inspiration of the Hudson River Valley
  • Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossing and Nineteenth-Century Landscape Painting Our Pick This video depicts a lecture on the art of Thomas Cole at the Yale Center for British Art. The lecture was given by Tim Barringer, Yale University's Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art on October 5, 2016

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Content compiled and written by Jessica DiPalma

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Greg Thomas

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IMAGES

  1. George B. Ellis after Thomas Cole, "American Scenery" (ca. 1850-1860)

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  2. Art History News: Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings

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  3. Hunters in a Landscape

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  4. Essay on American Scenery · Open Virtual Worlds

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  5. "New England Scenery" Thomas Cole

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  6. Genesee Scenery 1847 Painting

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COMMENTS

  1. Essay on American Scenery

    Jennifer GreimEssay on American Scenery09.22.2017. The Thomas Cole National Historic Site preserves and interprets the original home and studios of the artist and early environmentalist Thomas Cole (1801-1848). Cole founded the influential art movement of the United States, now known as the Hudson River School of landscape painting.

  2. PDF Essay on American Scenery

    [2. The Advantages of Cultivating a Taste for Scenery] If, then, it is indeed true that the contemplation of scenery can be so abundant a source of delight and improvement, a taste for it is certainly worthy of particular cultivation; for the capacity for enjoyment increases with the knowledge of the true means of obtaining it.

  3. Thomas Cole

    5 Replies Why does Cole think it is important to observe and paint American scenery? How does he think nature and humans should interact? How does one painting depict (or fail to depict) the ideals he discusses in his essay? ← The Coquette Charles Brockden Brown →

  4. PDF Thomas Cole's Essay on American Scenery

    by Thomas Cole Originally "Lecture on American Scenery" by Thomas Cole delivered before the Catskill Lyceum at the new Baptist Church, April 1, 1841 (edited version) The essay that with your indulgence I shall now offer is a mere sketch of an almost exhaustless subject—American Scenery; and in selecting the theme the author has

  5. Analyzing Thomas Cole's Essay On American Scenery

    In Thomas Cole's Essay on American Scenery, the reader is able to appreciate Cole's predilection and love for the American scenery.

  6. Thomas Cole: Essay on American Scenery Flashcards

    Thomas Cole: Essay on American Scenery What is the date of this essay? Click the card to flip 👆 Cole originally delivered this in a speech in 1835. The following year the essay was published in the American Monthly Magazine. Click the card to flip 👆 1 / 31 Flashcards Learn Test Match Q-Chat TechnoHistorian Teacher Top creator on Quizlet

  7. The greats outdoors: How Thomas Cole shaped the American landscape

    In 1836 Cole published his "Essay on American Scenery", which was, in part, a riposte to Hall.In it he lauded his adopted land, pointing out that its landscapes offered not just the sublime but also the picturesque and the beautiful - three themes that had been an important part of artistic discourse in Europe since the mid-18th century.

  8. Thomas Cole: Bringing Attention to the Glory of Pure Wilderness

    Drawing on influences from both sides of the Atlantic, Thomas Cole brought attention to the glory of pure wilderness and the encroaching order of civilization. "The most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness," wrote the painter Thomas Cole (1801-48) in an 1836 essay.

  9. Thomas Cole, America's first environmentalist artist (video ...

    Thomas Cole's painting, "The Hunter's Return," showcases a beautiful American landscape, symbolizing untouched nature. The painting reflects Cole's environmentalist concerns about the disappearing wilderness due to industrialization. ... It's very much in evidence the 'Essay on American Scenery' as this experience of God through natural works ...

  10. Thomas Cole

    Bailey Marshall November 19, 2014 at 11:15 am. Thomas Cole views American scenery as a source of joy and consolation. He writes of the tranquility, peace and transparency of water as well as other beautifiers of the earth including the forest scenery, hills, and sky.

  11. » Wilderness, settlement, American identity

    The railroad and lumber industry had visibly changed the landscape by 1845. A. The painting reinforces associations between the American wilderness and emerging national identity. B. The painting represents an idealized view of the untouched American landscape. C. The painting reveals the tension Cole felt between preserving the landscape and ...

  12. PDF Essay on American Scenery

    Essay on American Scenery Thomas Cole, "Essay on American Scenery," The American Magazine, n.s. 1 (Jan. 1836): 1-12.

  13. Thomas Cole Paintings, Bio, Ideas

    Summary of Thomas Cole. The paintings of Thomas Cole, like the writings of his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson, stand as monuments to the dreams and anxieties of the fledgling American nation during the mid-19th century; and they are also euphoric celebrations of its natural landscapes.Born in the industrial north-west of England, Cole moved to the United States as a young man, and from that ...

  14. Essay on American Scenery · Open Virtual Worlds

    Thomas Cole, "Essay on American Scenery," Open Virtual Worlds, accessed January 28, 2024, https://openvirtualworlds.org/omeka/items/show/1157.

  15. Essay on American Scenery

    Thomas Cole's Essay on American Scenery is a seminal work of American environmentalism, first published in 1836. The text of this edition is based on a revised version, which Cole delivered as a lecture before the Catskill Lyceum in 1841. Paperbound, 24 pages, 4.5 x 7 inches.

  16. Changing Landscape

    Consider how a landscape changes over time with a writing prompt and drawing activity below. Read Thomas Cole's Essay on American Scenery that he wrote in 1836 and record your observations of the landscape today. These educational activities for K-12 school children are designed to teach the curriculum theme of the Industrial Revolution.

  17. MuseumZero: American Scenery--Thomas Cole vs NASA

    American Scenery--Thomas Cole vs NASA | MuseumZero This idyllic image, then, brings together three aspects of America--and of Cole's personality. The image is a fantasy, yes, but it is also, a personal exploration, an expression of what it means to be a (recently naturalized) American.

  18. Thomas Cole essay American Scenery 1836

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  21. PDF Essay on American Scenery Contest

    At a time when American natural scenery was commonly thought of as inferior to the beauty of European landscapes, Cole argued that the wilds of America were just as, if not more, beautiful than any other place in the world.

  22. Essay on American Scenery Contest

    Essay on American Scenery Contest. Final Essay Contest Guidelines. 09.22.2017. Previous. Next. The Thomas Cole National Historic Site preserves and interprets the original home and studios of the artist and early environmentalist Thomas Cole (1801-1848). Cole founded the influential art movement of the United States, now known as the Hudson ...

  23. PDF Essay on American Scenery Contest

    Essay on American Scenery Contest Guidelines and Background: Thomas Cole (1801-1848) was an English-born painter who began Americas first major art ... To read Thomas Cole's Essay on American Scenery: Visit our website . Parameters: Essays should be between 2,000-5,000 words. Exceptions to word minimum will be made for poetry.