Landscape painters of the early nineteenth century such as Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Edwin Church were different in their portrayals of the American landscape (Sweet, 1945). Thomas Cole (1801-48) is considered as the founder of the American school of landscape painting. Thomas Cole spent his early days in England and came to America in 1818. He was the first person to break free from the style of painting landscapes in an idyllic manner. Cole perceived nature as an all powerful entity that was difficult to tame (Sweet, 1945). In 1825 he moved to New York from where his career as a professional landscape painter took off and this period also came to be known as the Hudson River School period (Ledes, 1994).
Cole, in the spring of 1826, founded the National Academy of Design and he had three canvases in the first exhibition. Because of his intense love of the country, he went to live in Catskill in 1826. Cole was mostly self-taught and he created his own new mode of vision for the representation of landscape (Ledes, 1994). Through a system called Associationism, a person could arrive at some knowledge of God through the contemplation of the immense power of nature. One could perceive the glory of God in a splendid sunrise, his majesty in a great mountain range, his gentleness in a little wild flower, or his wrath in the violence of a thunderstorm. Moreover, natural symbolism invested Cole’s art with a religious and moral content and their didactic quality increased as his career evolved.
Thomas Cole usually rambled on foot through areas of natural beauty making pencil sketches of untouched natural scenes. During the winter he painted them from memory using a combination of realistic and idealistic elements. He presents foreground in minute detail and blurs distant vistas to suggest the infinite American landscape. In “The Oxbow”, the blended panorama of the Connecticut River Valley and receding hills seem to stretch forever and the painting depicts the moment just after a thunderstorm, when the foliage, freshened by a cloudburst, shines in theatrical light (Strickland and Boswell, 1992). In Oxbow, Cole focuses on how the encroachments of cultivation would destroy the fierce grandeur of the wilderness (Flexner, 1998).
Cole faithfully reproduced rocks, juicy vegetation, a gnarled tree, his folding chair and umbrella. He was determined to show how these two entities though opposite in nature could live together in harmony. To the left of the painting a storm is brewing, and in the foreground we see the remnants of earlier storms in the form of trees blasted down by lightning. In the distance small farms are shown around the bend in the river. That bend itself resembles an ox bow, or yoke (Johnson, 2008). In other words, the ox bow symbolizes nature under human control. Finally, however, the viewer can also look out over a great space indicative of America’s future. The painting shows the immense power of nature and also of the sublimity of this power. The soft greens and yellows and the gentle rolling landscape of the farms seem to suggest a beauty in order that is equivalent to that of nature in its sublimity. The painting has been described as “both lyrical and ominous.”
“The Old Mill at Sunset” is an oil painting by Thomas Cole in which a panoramic oval-format landscape depicts a mill beside a calm river, with a small herd of cattle on the opposite bank. A young boy and girl sit in the foreground. In the background, sailboats float at the foot of a dramatic mountain range beneath a luminous sky. According to Conrad, this painting depicts the ideal America in the eyes of Cole where settled community and the untouched wilderness coexist together in harmony under the divine guidance of Providence (Nelson-Atkins.org, 2005). The Old Mill at Sunset was revered in the 19th century, as it is today. In 1853, Cole biographer Louis L. Noble praised The Old Mill at Sunset as “one of those rare creations of the pencil that touch the thoughtful beholder like a rich and tender melody. If the expression may be allowed, it is a pictured song….” (Nelson-Atkins.org, 2005). The canvas is known for its visual poetry.
By 1836, Cole had completed a cycle of five grandiose paintings titled “The Course of Empire”. The patron for this particular project was Lumond Reed, the New York collector. The series depicts Cole’s vision of the rise and fall of an ancient empire like Rome. The Course of Empire: Desolation is the last of the cycle and portrays the total destruction of a great city through a depiction of ruins in a pastoral setting. The painting shows a sense of calm with broken columns obliterated by nature. The time is set around early evening with the sun floating in a pale sky. The sea is also calm and there is a little deer sipping at the pool in the right corner. A stork and her nest are shown on a column. The stork is the symbol of birth and good fortune (Butler, 2008). The painting shows the stork to be nearly covered by vine. One of the most notable aspects of this painting is that it is totally devoid of humans. Even the works of humans are shown yielding to the forces of nature. Many who saw the cycle, interpreted it as Cole’s hostile commentary on the hubris of Jacksonian America which he saw heading towards destruction as ancient Rome (Dyson, 1998).
Thus, one finds that Cole was an artist who was influenced by other artists, literature, science, nature, politics and his own experiences and imagination. He always sought to bring out the poetic and spiritual elements in any landscape and that made him unique among the nineteenth century landscape artists.
Bibliography
Butler, P. Deborah (2008). Thomas Cole: Campania and The Course of Empire. Web.
Dyson, L. Stephen (1998). Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical Archaeology in the United States. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Johnson, L. Russell (2008). Nature: The Hudson River School. Web.
Nelson-Atkins.org (2005). Nelson-Atkins adds rare 19th century American Landscape Painting by Thomas Cole. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Press Release. Web.
Flexner, James (1998). Random Harvest. Fordham University Press. Bronx, New York.
Sweet, A. Frederick (1945). The Hudson River School and the Early American Landscape Tradition: Whitney Museum of American Art. New York. Publication of Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago.
Ledes, Allison Eckardt (1994). Thomas Cole reinterpreted. (‘Thomas Cole: Landscape into History,’ National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.). The Magazine Antiques.
Strickland, Carol and Boswell, John (1992). The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern. John Boswell Publication.