Explore Thomas Cole

Compare

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

Thomas Cole, View of Florence, oil on canvas, 1837, 39 1/5 x 63 1/10 in. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1961.39. View in Virtual Gallery

Cole exhibited View of Florence from San Minato at the National Academy of Design exhibition in 1837 along with View on the Catskill, Early Autumn. These two paintings are considered another pendant pair: they have identical dimensions and are very similar compositionally, each with a river running through the mid-ground and mountains in the distance. The Catskill painting represents an idealized preindustrial American scene, while the Italian subject displays all the attributes of Old World European civilization, complete with towering church spires and multiple bridges spanning the waters of the Arno River. In a review of the exhibition, a critic for the New-York Mirror wrote:

Here, instead of the valley of the Arno, and the domes and towers of Florence, suggesting ideas of former greatness and present servitude, we have the humble plain of the Catskill and its river, until now unknown to fame. The sublime mountains of the Catskill are the admiration of every American traveller, and form a conspicuous feature of this magnificent picture—magnificent not in monuments of art, but in the forms and coloring of nature. We hesitate which to pronounce best of the two pictures Mr. Cole has placed before us in this exhibition; we wander from one to the other, and that is best before which we, for the time being, stand. ¹