Explore Thomas Cole

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

View on the Catskill, Early Autumn

Thomas Cole. Oil on canvas, 1836-37, 39 x 63 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift in memory of Jonathan Sturges by his children, 1895, 95.13.3.

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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 

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