Explore Thomas Cole

  • Interactive Tour
  • Virtual Gallery
  • Cole's Landscapes
  • Definitions
  • Scrapbook
  • Cole's Circle
  • Learn More

Back to Tour Intro

     
  • Falls of the Kaaterskill
  •  
  • The Clove, Catskills
  •  
  • The Course of Empire: The Savage State
  •  
  • The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State
  •  
  • The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire
  •  
  • The Course of Empire: Destruction
  •  
  • The Course of Empire: Desolation
  •  
  • View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After A Thunderstorm (The Oxbow)
  •  
  • View on the Catskill, Early Autumn
  •  
  • The Voyage of Life: Childhood (First Set)
  •  
  • The Voyage of Life: Youth (First Set)
  •  
  • The Voyage of Life: Manhood (First Set)
  •  
  • The Voyage of Life: Old Age (First Set)
  •  
  • The Architect's Dream
  •  
  • Mount Etna From Taormina, Sicily
  •  
  • A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning
  •  
  • Kindred Spirits

The Clove, Catskills

Thomas Cole. Oil on canvas, 1827, 25 ¼ x 35 1/8 in. New Britain Museum of American Art. Charles F. Smith Fund, 1945.22.

  • zoom & Pan
  • about
  • decode
  • compare
  • Cole's process
  • Cole's words
  • locate

Compare

  • 1.Durand, Kaaterskill Clove
  • 2.Gifford, A Gorge in the Mountains

Asher B. Durand, Kaaterskill Clove, oil on canvas, 1866, 38 ¼ x 60 in. The Century Association, New York, NY. View in Scrapbook

Durand's much later painting is a softer depiction of Kaaterskill Clove in the summer. Interestingly, it conveys more of a sense of the "golden splendour" that Cole described in his journal during his 1838 sketching trip to the Clove. The scene is more peaceful than Cole's more turbulent view, while the lack of any human figures in the foreground gives the spectator the sense of floating over the vista. Here, we see Durand experimenting with a new style, now known as luminism, in which the painting is unified through soft forms and contours and enveloping atmospheric effects. 1 

thomas cole

This site employs current web standards and accessibility best practices for CSS, XHTML, Flash, and JavaScript.
It performs best with Firefox 3.x and Apple Safari 3.x or greater, Opera 9.x and Adobe Flash Player 10 or greater.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Share
  • © 2015