Thomas Cole is today known as the founder of the Hudson River School of art, which was a particular approach to painting that focused on providing a realistic and detailed look at the American landscape at that time in history. Artists following Cole’s example concentrated on portraying both the tamed landscape of settlements and the untamed wild places that were then still close. Cole’s effectiveness was brought about as a result of his ability to blend romanticized ideas of the country with a natural realism as can be seen in his painting “The Oxbow” or “View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm.”
The full title of this 51 ½” x 76” oil on canvas painting is significant in that it provides the direction of the action. Westerners are taught to ‘read’ things from left to right orientation, which would suggest the dark storm bulked on the left side of the canvas over a wild and darkly vegetated hill is about to overtake the small community in the golden river valley on the right. With the title, though, Cole suggests that the thunderstorm has already passed the community, allowing the viewer to relax that no harm will befall it.
The broken lines of the trees in the foreground prevent the eye from falling out of the picture as it is beaten down by the heavy verticals of the rainshower while the softened openness of the limitless plains below draws the eye to seek details where there are none. The gentle curve of the oxbow in the river helps to draw the eye to the center and back up to the wilderness at a leisurely pace while a tiny self-portrait of the artist at his easel, the top of which serves as a sort of tiny arrow pointing directly at the fields below again encourages movement and seemingly random circular wandering.
At the same time that the line and rhythm of the piece suggest idyllic pastoral imaginings, Cole establishes a struggle occurring between the cultured land of the valley and the wilderness lands of the hill. The valley is bathed with a soft golden light as if highlighting the realization that he is living in a golden age of civilization. It is neatly partitioned and even the violence of the passing thunderstorm cannot intrude upon its tranquility. By contrast, the hill is sharply cut off from the valley as there are no discernable means by which an individual, traveling from that small community, might reach the wilderness of the hill.
It is thickly covered with dark, pointing evergreen trees and clumps of bushes so tight no land can actually be seen. In the immediate foreground, the dark forms of broken and horrendously twisted trees are apparent, bent sharply diagonal by harsh winds and stunted living conditions. The heavy thunderstorm releases its fury over the wilderness, hiding it in even darker mystery as the small self-portrait provides a sense of perspective. The only true diagonals to be found in the painting are present in the wilder half, giving this side of the painting greater energy and force.
Through his use of a mid-tone value, sweeping scale, and flowing lines, Cole can establish a sense of the idyllic forms of pastoral romanticism as well as suggest that his own time was experiencing a golden age of flowering. At the same time, he establishes a sense of discord as the cultured fields of the valley contend with the darkened fury of the wild presented through the subject, forms, and color. Through this portrayal, Cole doesn’t seem to condemn either setting as necessarily evil or good but seems to make the argument that each has its own form of beauty to be appreciated and recorded. Nature retains her power even as mankind establishes its own sort of order.