List of paintings by Thomas Cole

Cole is pictured with black hair and sideburns
An 1837 portrait of Cole by fellow Hudson River School painter Asher Brown Durand

Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement.[1][2] Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintings. Influenced by European painters, but with a strong American sensibility,[3] he was prolific throughout his career and worked primarily with oil on canvas. His paintings are typically allegoric and often depict small figures or structures set against moody and evocative natural landscapes. They are usually escapist, framing the New World as a natural eden contrasting with the smog-filled cityscapes of Industrial Revolution-era Britain, in which he grew up.[4][5] His works, often seen as conservative, criticize the contemporary trends of industrialism, urbanism, and westward expansion.[3]

Self-taught, Cole began painting portraits in 1822. In the ensuing years, he shifted his focus to landscapes.[6] One of Cole's first landscapes, Lake with Dead Trees (1825), was among those that first popularized his works in an 1825 exhibition.[7] Most of his early works depict the wilderness, "the truly American forest", typically the Hudson River Valley and Catskills where he resided.[7][8] From 1831 to 1832, Cole traversed Italy; some of the classical ruins he visited made appearances in his paintings, such as Aqueduct near Rome (1832), Roman Campagna (1843), and Arch of Nero (1846). While in Rome, Cole formulated the concept for his most ambitious work yet:[9] The Course of Empire, a series of five paintings following the rise and fall of civilization. Completed in 1836, the series reflects nostalgia for pastoralism and Cole's personal opposition to US President Andrew Jackson.[3] His 1836 painting The Oxbow encompasses many of the themes from his earlier landscapes, juxtaposing untamed nature with "civilized" land.[10] Later in life, Cole transitioned away from natural landscapes to focus more on works conveying religious or spiritual themes.[2] In 1842, he painted The Voyage of Life, another allegorical series, this time depicting the course of an individual's life. His 1847 painting Prometheus Bound, based on the Greek myth, is believed by some analysts to express abolitionist sentiments.[11] One of Cole's final landscapes, Cross at Sunset, was left unfinished after his premature death in 1848.[12]

Today, Cole's work are held across a wide variety of major and national museums, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art having some of the largest collections. The following list consists only of paintings documented in public collections.

  1. ^ "Thomas Cole". National Gallery of Art. Archived from the original on August 9, 2020. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  2. ^ a b Genocchio, Benjamin (June 18, 2006). "In an Untamed Wilderness, Finding the Serene". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 15, 2018. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c Cotter, Holland (March 15, 2018). "Thomas Cole, American Moralist". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 24, 2020. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  4. ^ Kornhauser, Elizabeth (January 8, 2018). "Re-examining Thomas Cole". The Magazine Antiques. Archived from the original on May 8, 2018. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
  5. ^ Parry III, Ellwood C. (Summer 1985). "Thomas Cole's "The Hunter's Return"". The American Art Journal. 17 (3): 2–17. doi:10.2307/1594431. JSTOR 1594431. Archived from the original on December 5, 2020. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  6. ^ Truettner, William H.; Wallach, Alan (1994). Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. Yale University Press. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-0-300-05850-5.
  7. ^ a b Weidman, J. "Modern Landscapes". Allen Memorial Art Museum. Archived from the original on July 21, 2020. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
  8. ^ "Thomas Cole's Story". Thomas Cole National Historical Site. Archived from the original on July 16, 2020. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
  9. ^ "Thomas Cole". Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on August 24, 2020. Retrieved August 21, 2020.
  10. ^ Roque, Oswaldo Rodriguez (1982). ""The Oxbow" by Thomas Cole: Iconography of an American Landscape Painting". Metropolitan Museum Journal. 17: 63–73. doi:10.2307/1512787. JSTOR 1512787. S2CID 194070182. Archived from the original on December 5, 2020. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  11. ^ Junker, Patricia (2000). "Thomas Cole's "Prometheus Bound:" An Allegory for the 1840s". The American Art Journal. 31 (1/2): 32–55. doi:10.2307/1594625. JSTOR 1594625. Archived from the original on December 5, 2020. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference sunset was invoked but never defined (see the help page).