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 from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After A Thunderstorm (The Oxbow)

Thomas Cole. Oil on canvas, 1836, 51 ½ x 76 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908, 8.228.

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Decode

Mouse over the detail to view its caption, click it to zoom in, and use the reset button on the lower right to zoom back out.

1. Thunderclouds roll out of the landscape to reveal a bright sky beyond. As in the contemporaneous Course of Empire, Cole visualizes the dramatic cycle of nature.

2. A blasted tree trunk represents the untamed wilderness.

3. The right side of the composition depicts the cultivated river valley inhabited by farmers.

4. The loop in the river (also known as Hockanum Bend) is nicknamed "The Oxbow" because its shape resembles the bowed wooden collar of a yoked ox.

5. This is a presumed self-portrait of Cole seated on the mountaintop, which proclaims the artist's affinity with untamed nature.

6. Cole signs his name on the artist's portfolio, and the stool is very similar to the one he actually used on his sketching trips, now in the collection of Cedar Grove. See also Cole's portable paint box. Interestingly, the protruding umbrella, used by Cole to shade himself while sketching, connects the two sides of the composition, which otherwise stand in dramatic opposition.

7. Some historians interpret the markings in the cleared mountain as Hebrew letters that spell "Noah" or, viewed from upside-down, "Shaddai" (the Old Testament word for "the Almighty"). This interpretation suggests that Cole recognized the potential beauty of the civilized landscape and used it to evoke a pre-industrial Holy Land. By carving a sacred name into the landscape, Cole also may have intended to identify God as the true artist of nature.

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