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• 1. River in the Catskills
• 2. View of Florence

Thomas Cole, River in the Catskills, oil on canvas, 1843, 27 ½ x 40 3/8 in. Museum of Fine Arts (Boston). Gift of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815-1865, 47.1201. View in Virtual Gallery

Cole painted this work seven years after View on the Catskill, Early Autumn. Historians often consider the two paintings to be pendants, a before-and-after record of Catskill Creek. Whereas View on the Catskill conveys a perfect pastoral ideal, River in the Catskills shows the destruction caused by the Canajoharie & Catskill Railroad. In the background, a railroad bridge cuts through the once-tranquil landscape, and a steam engine with billowing smoke barrels across the river. The maple tree in the left foreground of View on the Catskill has been cut down and is now a mere stump, while the framing trees at the right have completely disappeared. Much of the dense foliage is now pasture land. A lone man, axe in hand, surveys the scene from the foreground amid branches he has recently cut from a tree. In River in the Catskills, Cole records the troubling transformation of the lovely environment he painted in View on the Catskills, Early Autumn. ¹