Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole | |
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oil on canvas | |
Notable work | The Titan's Goblet The Course of Empire The Oxbow The Voyage of Life among others... |
Movement | Hudson River School |
Thomas Cole (1 February 1801 – 11 February 1848) was an English-born American artist and the founder of the
Early life and education
Born in
Cole found work early on as an engraver. He was largely self-taught as a painter, relying on books and by studying the work of other artists. In 1822, he started working as a portrait painter and later on, gradually shifted his focus to landscape.[8]
Painting
In New York, Cole sold three paintings to George W. Bruen,
Cole was primarily a painter of landscapes, but he also painted allegorical works. The most famous of these are the five-part series,
Cole influenced his peers in the art movement later termed the Hudson River School, especially Asher B. Durand and Frederic Edwin Church. Church studied with Cole from 1844 to 1846, where he learned Cole's technique of sketching from nature and later developing an idealized, finished composition; Cole's influence is particularly notable in Church's early paintings.[15] Cole spent the years 1829 to 1832 and 1841 to 1842 abroad, mainly in England and Italy.[6]
Other work
Cole is best known for his work as an American landscape artist. In an 1836
In 1842, Cole embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe in an effort to study in the style of the Old Masters and to paint its scenery. Most striking to Cole was Europe's tallest active volcano, Mount Etna. Cole was so moved by the volcano's beauty that he produced several sketches and at least six paintings of it.[18] The most famous of these works is A View of Mount Etna from Taormina which is a 78-by-120-inch (1,980 by 3,050 mm) oil on canvas. Cole also produced a highly detailed sketch View of Mount Etna which shows a panoramic view of the volcano with the crumbling walls of the ancient Greek theater of Taormina on the far right.
Cole was also a poet and dabbled in architecture, a not uncommon practice at the time when the profession was not so codified. Cole was an entrant in the design competition held in 1838 to create the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. His entry won third place, and many contend that the finished building, a composite of the first, second, and third-place entries, bears a great similarity to Cole's entry.[19]
Personal life
After 1827 Cole maintained a studio at the farm called
Additionally, Cole held many friendships with important figures in the art world including Daniel Wadsworth, with whom he shared a close friendship. Proof of this friendship can be seen in the letters that were unearthed in the 1980s by the Trinity College Watkinson Library. Cole emotionally wrote Wadsworth in July 1832: "Years have passed away since I saw you & time & the world have undoubtedly wrought many changes in both of us; but the recollection of your friendship... [has] never faded in my mind & I look at those pleasures as 'flowers that never will in other garden grow-'"[21] Thomas Cole died at Catskill on February 11, 1848, of
Selected works
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Imaginary scene from The Last of the Mohicans (1827), Wadsworth Atheneum
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Romantic Landscape with Ruined Tower (1832–36), Albany Institute of History & Art
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The Course of Empire: Consummation (1835–1836), New-York Historical Society
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Temple of Segesta (1843), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning (c. 1844), Brooklyn Museum
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Home in the Woods (1847), Reynolda House Museum of American Art
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Prometheus Bound (1847), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
See also
References
Notes
- ^ They were: Theodore Alexander Cole, born January 1, 1838; Mary Bartow Cole, born September 23, 1839; Emily Cole, born August 27, 1843; Elizabeth Cole, born April 5, 1847 (died in infancy); Thomas Cole Jr., born September 16, 1848. ("A Guide to the Thomas Cole Collection" (PDF). Albany Institute of History and Art. p. 9. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 20, 2008. Retrieved January 6, 2009.)
Citations
- ^ "Thomas Cole". National Gallery of Art. Archived from the original on August 9, 2020. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
- ^ 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.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ Kornhauser, Elizabeth (January 8, 2018). "Re-examining Thomas Cole". The Magazine Antiques. Archived from the original on May 8, 2018. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
- from the original on December 5, 2020. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
- ^ a b c Chisholm 1911.
- ^ Tour brochure, Thomas Cole House, Catskill NY.Truettner, William H.; Wallach, Alan (1994). Thomas Cole Landscape into History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. p. 8.
- ^ Truettner, William H. (1994). Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. pp. 25–26.
- ^ Noble, Louis Legrand (1856). The life and works of Thomas Cole. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. p. 56.
- ^ Effmann, Elise (November 2004). "Thomas Cole's View of Fort Putnam" (PDF). The Magazine Antiques: 154–159. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
- ^ "COLE T25FP". Hamilton Auction Galleries. Archived from the original on November 27, 2020.
- ^ Brophy, Alfred L. (2009). "Property and Progress: Antebellum Landscape Art and Property Law" (PDF). McGeorge Law Review. 40: 605–59. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
- Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas
- ^ Schweber, Nate (July 1, 2015). "Unknown Thomas Cole Paintings Found at His Home". The New York Times. Retrieved July 3, 2015.
- ISBN 978-0300109887.
- ^ "American Scenery--Thomas Cole vs NASA".
- ^ Cole, Thomas (January 1836). "American Scenery". The American Monthly Magazine. 1 (1): 1–12.
- ^ "Studies on Thomas Cole" Baltimore Museum of Art, Annual II. pp. 123. Baltimore, Maryland 1967.
- ISBN 978-0-87338-616-6.
- ^ "The Art of Emily Cole". Thomas Cole National Historic Site. February 19, 2019. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ Cole, T., & Wadsworth, D. (1983). The correspondence of Thomas Cole and Daniel Wadsworth: Letters in the Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, and in the New York State Library, Albany, New York. Hartford, Conn.: Connecticut Historical Society.
- ^ "Biography of Thomas Cole". Thomas Cole National Historic Site. March 18, 2016.
- ^ "Cedar Grove History". Thomascole.org. Archived from the original on January 6, 2014. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
- ^ "History of Cedar Grove". The Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Archived from the original on October 18, 2007. Retrieved October 30, 2007.
Other sources
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 665.
External links
External videos | |
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Cole's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Smarthistory | |
Cole's The Oxbow, Smarthistory |
- Cedar Grove – The Thomas Cole National Historical Site in Catskill, NY
- Thomas Cole at Find a Grave
- Works by Thomas Cole at the Cincinnati Art Museum
- White Mountain paintings by Thomas Cole
- Reynolda House Museum of American Art
- Information about Thomas Cole can be found in the Thomas Cole Collection, which contains correspondence, financial and legal documents, clippings, exhibition catalogs, poems related to him and his family, in the Albany Institute of History & Art Library.
- Thomas A. Cole Papers, 1821–1863. This finding aid contains biographical information about Cole and describes the collection of his papers (correspondence, journals, notebooks, essays and poetry) held by the New York State Library.
- Thomas Cole's Journal, 1834–1848. The journal, which was digitized by the New York State Library, contains scattered handwritten entries from November 5, 1834, through February 1, 1848.
- Art and the empire city: New York, 1825–1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Thomas Cole (see index)
- American paradise: the world of the Hudson River school, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Thomas Cole (see index)
- Hudson River school visions: the landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains paintings by and material on Cole (see index)
- American Scenery, by Thomas Cole Full text with introduction
- Works by Thomas Cole at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)