From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art

 From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

June 28–December 29, 2019

Reviewed by Ed Voves
Original photos by Anne Lloyd

'"Thus in the beginning all the World was America."

This often-quoted statement by John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government (published in 1689) is acutely relevant to an outstanding exhibition on the birth of landscape art in the United States. This splendid, beautifully-mounted exhibit recently opened at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (PAFA).

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) 

Gallery views of the From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 

Locke commented on the way that human beings originally lived in a state of nature.  He contrasted this primal life-style with habitation in a civil society based on legal codes enforced by the rule of political authority.

"America" for Locke was the great example of the state of nature. God, Locke wrote. "who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience. The Earth, and all that is therein, is given to Men for the Support and Comfort of their being."

A century later, after the English-speaking colonists had asserted political independence from Britain, their relationship to the natural world became a matter of great importance. The Patriots having won the War of Independence, "America" was now theirs to "make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience."

Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, proposed in 1782 that a quote from the Roman poet Virgil be modified to appear on the Great Seal of the United States, Novus Ordo Seclorum. The motion passed but the idea of "a New Order of the Ages" no longer corresponded to Locke's conception of "America" as a virgin wilderness. After a century of using the lands along the Atlantic seaboard for "the Support and Comfort of their being," few Americans now lived in a "state" of nature.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Joshua Shaw’s Landscape with Farmhouse and Castle, 1818

In 1790, George Washington and the freshly-minted United States Government launched into the serious business of nation-building. The U.S. capital was the most-populous and centrally-located of America's cities, Philadelphia. As Washington's administration and the First Congress wrestled with the many problems facing the fledgling nation, Philadelphia-based artists addressed the challenges of visually representing "a New Order of the Ages" for their country.

This crucial moment in the history of the United States is where the PAFA exhibition comes in. The exhibit has a rather unusual name (which we will discuss) but it really is vital to think of it in terms of the birth of landscape art in the U.S and of the cultural identity crisis which occurred during the 1820's and 1830's.

The PAFA exhibition is entitled From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic. The Hudson River, because of its relation to New York City, is well-known, but what or where is the Schuylkill?

Pierre Varlé, Plan of the City and Its Environs, 1798

This map of Philadelphia shows the grid of the city between the shallow, meandering Schuylkill River on the left and the deep-water Delaware on the right.

The Schuylkill is one of two rivers which flow around the central and oldest part of Philadelphia. Schuylkill means "hidden creek," a name conferred on it by Dutch explorers in the 1600's. Unlike the much larger Delaware River, the Schuylkill is a shallow stream, limiting its use by ocean-going ships. To make the Schuylkill more usable for "the Support and Comfort of their being," Philadelphians tried a number of economic strategies like the use of steamboats and the digging of one of the first canals in the U.S., opened in 1825.

Philadelphia's claim to greatness during the early 1800's, once the political capital had moved to Washington D.C., was the Fairmount Water Works.

Designed in 1812, the Fairmount Water Works consisted of a pumping station and reservoir to supply the city with fresh water from the Schuylkill. Ironically, this impressive facility was conceived and approved on the mistaken assumption that the devastating 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic, which killed half of Philadelphia's population, had been caused by polluted water. Mosquitoes were the real culprit, but the "Watering Committee" had indeed acted wisely. Even Charles Dickens, no great admirer of Americans, was impressed with the Fairmount Water Works when he visited the United States in 1842.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)  Detail of Thomas Birch's Fairmount Water Works, 1821

The stately, neoclassical  edifice of the Fairmount Water Works became so famous that the image was used to decorate Chinese export porcelain, made for the U.S. market.

Unknown artist (China), Cup and Saucer showing the Philadelphia Water Works, 1825

The image of "American" nature which the early Philadelphia artists used time-and-again was one of "progress" and utility, as well as charm and beauty. Philadelphia's merchant elite built country homes on the banks of the Schuylkill and the Delaware where they could watch the movement of their steamboats and coal-laden canal barges.

To give them credit, Philadelphia's "movers and shakers" devoted a considerable amount of effort and money on the arts. The redoubtable Peale brothers, Charles and James, played a dual role as major portrait painters and civic leaders. Not only did the Peales paint the proud "face" of America's prominent leaders and citizens, they also depicted the countryside of the new American nation as we can see in the setting of this family portrait by James Peale.

James Peale, The Artist and His Family, 1795

The Peale brothers were leaders in the founding in 1805 of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The first art school in the U.S., PAFA provided budding artists with the skills to paint or sculpt images of "progress" for the new Republic.

What should have been a straightforward American success story quickly became rather complicated. For one thing,  most of the painters involved  in the Philadelphia-based landscape movement were named Thomas: Thomas Birch, Thomas Doughty, Thomas Cole and Thomas Moran.

The real wrinkle in this story is the fact that three of these artists named "Thomas" were born in England. A number of early America's leading artists like Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley had traveled to Britain around the time of the Revolution, never to return. These young British-born artists looked to the New World to make their fortune.

Thomas Birch's panoramic view of the Fairmount Water Works and the Schuylkill River is perhaps the greatest of the "landscapes of progress" which preoccupied American artists during the early 1800's. Birch painted this exceptional landscape in 1821, epitomizing the virtue and hard work needed to create the Novus Ordo Seclorum in America.

Thomas Birch, Fairmount Water Works, 1821

Birch, however, had achieved success painting naval battles featuring U.S.S. Constitution, "Old Ironsides," during the War of 1812. Increasingly, Birch favored maritime drama over the domestic harmony of the Fairmount Water Works and country homes. This yearning for adventure was the American equivalent of the celebration of the "sublime" in nature taking place in British art at the same time.

America had plenty of "sublime" of its own. Upstream of the Fairmount Water Works was the "Falls of the Schuylkill" and for those willing to venture into the frontier region of the U.S. there was the breath-taking Niagara Falls. Already famous from drawings made by British military engineers during the 1700's, Niagara with its awesome, cascading streams of water began nudging the Fairmount Water Works off the sketch-books and easels of American artists. 

William Russell Birch, Falls of Niagara, 1827

Thomas Birch's father, mercifully name William, caught a case of "Niagara" fever. Highly regarded for a series of urban views of Philadelphia which he created shortly after arriving in the U.S., Birch, Senior, plunged headlong into the wilderness with this 1827 enamel on copper view of  Niagara Falls. Interestingly, he chose a close-cropped focus for this miniature scene, with an Iroquois warrior to give a sense of scale. This was an appreciation of "America" worthy of John Locke - and of a rising generation of Americans whose gaze was increasingly directed westwards. 

"Stay-at-homes" could also savor the sublime with views of Niagara Falls on their dinnerware as with this magnificent lead-glazed earthenware serving dish. It was made by the British firm, William Adams and Sons, at some point between 1834 to 1850. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) 

William Adams & Sons Factory & Thomas Cole, The Falls of Niagara, U.S., 1834-1850

The image on the Adams and Sons serving dish was based on a painting by Thomas Cole (1801-1848).  Born in Lancashire, Cole came to America in 1817. His family's fortune had been ruined in an economic downturn in England. Though largely self-taught, Cole did study for a time at PAFA from 1823 to 1825. He then departed for an extensive sketching and painting tour of New York state, at that time still heavily-forested and sparsely populated. It was Cole who made the definitive turn in U.S. art from "Arcadia" inspired landscapes to the rugged, authentic American scene of the Hudson River School.

That is the canonical version of U.S. art history. A major exhibition in 2018, presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery in London, examined Cole's decisive contributions to American culture. Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings also investigated the influence of J.M.W. Turner, John Constable and other leading British artists upon Cole when he returned to Britain for a study-visit in 1827. Atlantic Crossings was a wonderful exhibit - but did not address in any detail the early formative contributions of the Philadelphia art scene to Cole's success.

That the "Schuylkill River School" laid the foundation of the more famous Hudson River School is the theme of the PAFA exhibition. It would be incorrect, however, to assume that PAFA's From the Schuylkill to the Hudson was planned as a rebuttal to Atlantic Crossings at the Met. Exhibitions take many years to plan. For over a decade, Dr. Anna O. Marley, PAFA's Curator of Historical American Art, has been studying the origins of American landscape art, dating back well before 1800.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)

 Dr. Anna O. Marley, PAFA's Curator of Historical American Art. Dr. Marley stands next to Thomas Birch’s The Residence of James Craig, Bristol, Pennsylvania, ca.1820-21

No less an authority than Thomas Cole would have agreed with Dr. Marley on the accomplishments and example of the Philadelphia-based landscape artists. Speaking later in his life to the art historian, William Dunlap, Cole said as a young artist that "his heart sunk as he felt his deficiencies in art when standing before the landscapes of Birch."

Cole more than made-up for his "deficiencies." He became a national cultural figure and that is how we should view the rise of landscape painting in the early Republic. This was not an either/or process, Philadelphia vs. New York. The artists involved, whether the many "Thomases" or John Lewis Krimmel, Joshua Shaw, Russell Smith  and Asher Durand, all had one objective. It was to discover and accurately depict the authentic American landscape.

The key discovery was the need to go back to primal nature, Locke's "America," or as close as the artists could reach. It did not matter whether they were members of a Schuylkill River School or a Hudson River School. Their paintings played a leading role in a national trend. Beginning In the 1820's, Americans began to search for their identity in art, literature, religion and philosophy. James Fenimore Cooper, after writing dull English-style novels, dropped this derivative format, selecting American frontier history as the subject for his immortal "Leatherstocking" tales.

Jacob Eichholtz, Conestoga Creek and Lancaster, 1833

Albert Bierstadt, Niagara, 1869

Cooper was writing The Last of the Mohicans in 1825, the year that Cole first traveled up the Hudson. The Pennsylvania-born Jacob Eichholtz (1776-1842) and the German-born Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) followed Cooper and Cole to the "backcountry" for the same purpose. All sought to discover the real America and the true meaning of American life.

It is delightful to be able to report that this journey of discovery continues with From the Schuylkill to the Hudson at PAFA.

Most of the works of art on view in the exhibition come from PAFA's extensive collection. Dr. Marley conducted a thorough audit of PAFA's paintings from the 1800's and came across a magnificent mid-nineteenth century landscape which had been forgotten or overlooked for decades. Research showed that the painting had quite a tale to tell, directly relevant to the theme of From the Schuylkill to the Hudson.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Paul Weber’s Landscape: Evening, 1856

The huge oil-on-canvas was entitled Landscape: Evening. A now obscure German artist, Paul Weber (1823-1916), had created this masterpiece in 1856. It is a tour-de-force depiction of the American wilderness and was so-regarded during the 1850's. A subscription was taken among Philadelphia's art lovers to purchase the painting for PAFA.

Who was this virtually unknown painter? Gottlieb Daniel Paul Weber had fled Germany after the 1848 democratic revolutions in Western Europe had been crushed by military  forces. He emigrated to the U.S., settling in Philadelphia. He  exhibited widely throughout the U.S. and won the Silver Medal from PAFA in 1858.

Weber was also an influential teacher. Two of the greatest American landscape painters of the 1800's, William Trost Richards and William Stanley Haseltine, studied with Weber. Both are now relatively forgotten, as is Weber. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Detail of Paul Weber’s Landscape: Evening

Landscape: Evening is a revelation. This is not only a technical marvel, as can be seen in the incredible way that Weber handled the golden glow of the setting sun on the topmost branches of the trees. More significantly, Weber transformed a relatively undistinguished patch of woodland into a setting for profound meditation on the mysteries of creation, the cosmos, the passage of time.

 There are no landmark features of nature here or man-made monuments, no Niagara Falls or Fairmount Water Works, to distract your attention. It's just you and God. 

 With this rediscovered masterpiece, Paul Weber places each of us in that much-discussed realm, the state of nature, where "in the beginning all the World was America."

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves. Original Photos: Anne Lloyd. All rights reserved                                                                                           
Images courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

Introductory Image:

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Detail of Thomas Birch's Fairmount Water Works, 1821. Oil on canvas:  20 1/8 x 30 1/16 in. (51.1175 x 76.35875 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection. #: 1845.1. Bequest of Charles Graff.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery views of the From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Joshua Shaw’s Landscape with Farmhouse and Castle, 1818. Oil on canvas: 15 1/4 x 21 1/2 in. (38.7 x 54.6 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1879.8.21. Bequest of Henry C. Carey (The Carey Collection).

Pierre Varlé. Plan of the City and Its Environs, 1798. Watercolor on paper: 18 x 20 in. (45.72 x 50.8 cm.) Private collection, Chestnut Hill

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Detail of Thomas Birch's Fairmount Water Works, 1821.

Artist/maker unknown, Chinese, for export to the American market. Cup and Saucer showing the Philadelphia Waterworks,1825. Hard-paste porcelain with cobalt underglaze decoration and gilt cup: 2 5/8 x 4 3/8 x 3 5/8 in. (6.6675 x 11.1125 x 9.2075 cm.); saucer: 1 1/8 x 5 1/2 in. (2.8575 x 13.97 cm.) Philadelphia Museum of Art

James Peale, (1749 -1831) The Artist and His Family, 1795.Oil on canvas: 31 1/4 x 32 3/4 in. (79.4 x 83.2 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1922.1.1. Gift of John Frederick Lewis, 1922.1.1.

Thomas Birch, (1779-1851) Fairmount Water Works, 1821. Oil on canvas: 20 1/8 x 30 1/16 in. (51.1175 x 76.35875 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1845.1. Bequest of Charles Graff.

William Russell Birch, (1755-1834) Falls of Niagara, 1827. Enamel on copper: 2 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (6.4 x 5.7 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1860.1. Bequest of Eliza Howard Burd.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) William Adams and Sons Factory & Thomas Cole, The Falls of Niagara, U.S., 1834-1850. Earthenware (white) and lead glaze 1 11/16 x 19 7/8 x 16 3/8 in. (4.318 x 50.546 x 41.656 cm.) Winterthur Museum, Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Dr. Anna O. Marley, Curator of Historical American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Dr. Marley stands next to Thomas Birch’s The Residence of James Craig, Bristol, Pennsylvania, as seen from the Delaware River, ca. 1820-21, PAFA collection.

Albert Bierstadt, (1830-1902) Niagara, 1869.Oil on paper laid down on canvas: 19 x 27 in. (48.26 x 68.58 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #2015.18. Joseph E. Temple Fund.

Jacob Eichholtz, (1776-1842) Conestoga Creek and Lancaster, 1833. Oil on canvas: 20 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. (51.4 x 76.8 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1961.8.10. Gift of Mrs. James H. Beal.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Paul Weber’s Landscape: Evening, 1856. Oil on canvas: 60 1/4 x 86 in. (153.0 x 218.4 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy purchase, by subscription, #1857.1.

                                                                    

Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings

Metropolitan Museum of Art  

 January 30, 2018 - May 13, 2018

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The rise of landscape painting  during the first half of the nineteenth century is a familiar story. Usually told from a French perspective, the standard narrative acknowledges British innovators like J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, before proceeding to the struggle and eventual triumph of Impressionism.

A recently-opened exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings, studies the embrace of landscape art during the 1800's from a different perspective. Instead of looking toward France, this superb exhibition directs our attention to the developing art scene in the young American Republic.

The key figure in bringing the landscape "school" to the United States was Thomas Cole (1801-1848). Cole was born in Lancashire, just as this region in the north of England experienced the first effects of full-scale industrialization. The volatile economic climate of the Industrial Revolution enriched some families, while devastating others. Cole's family, though well-to-do, was ruined  and sought to regain their fortune in the United States.

When the young Cole reached America in 1817, he had to earn his living and this search for employment took him and his family on a journey around the northern states of the U.S. Cole's artistic ability, already apparent in England, kept surfacing.  Fortunately, he was able to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art for a short period and then to make a bid to become a full-fledged artist.

Matthew Brady, Thomas Cole, ca.1845

In 1825, Cole exhibited several works in New York City, winning applause from the last of "founding Fathers" of American art, John Trumbull. More to the point, Trumbull purchased one of Cole's paintings - the highest praise one artist can give to another. This stroke of good fortune confirmed that a career in the arts was Cole's destiny.                                                                                                                            
The key to appreciating Cole's career path is that he focused on landscape painting from the start. Portrait painting was never a consideration. Cole fell in love with the face of American nature, both cultivated areas like the Hudson Valley and the "back country" which had yet to tamed by the pioneer's ax and plow. Surprisingly, no other American artist had made landscape painting their primary oeuvre. The field was open to Cole and he never looked back.

The Metropolitan exhibition displays a number of Cole's early works. His talent was evident from the first, though by European standards these first efforts were competent at best. But this was America and national pride was on the rise, particularly as the U.S. celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1826. Americans were proud of their nation and appreciated rising literary talents, with Washington Irving in the lead, who celebrated American themes.

Thomas Cole, Scene from "The Last of the Mohicans," 

Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund,1827

Cole was quick to capitalize on the rising sense of America heritage. One of his early landscapes refers to James Fenimore Cooper's bestselling novel, Scene from “The Last of the Mohicans,” Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund, 1827. 

Given the diminutive size of the human figures, the action in the painting might just as well be a religious revival or a political rally. It really is the spectacular natural setting that counts. Cole cleverly used the appeal of Cooper's novel to get cultured Americans to take a look at the landscape around them. 

Cole's landscapes were highly-esteemed and began to sell. In 1826, Cole along with other American artists and cultural leaders joined ranks to found the National Academy of Design in New York City. Less than a decade after emigrating to the United States, Cole had become one of the leading lights of American art.

Thomas Cole, From Nature, 1823

Cole might have chosen a scene from “The Last of the Mohicans” as inspiration but there was a dark, nightmare lurking on the edge of many of his other paintings. In 1823, Cole sketched a withered, gnarled tree, with knotted bark resembling human features. Instead of a Fenimore Cooper novel, this tree would have been better suited to a story by Edgar Allen Poe.

Thomas Cole, Detail of The Oxbow, 1836

A version of this gaunt, twisted tree would reappear in many of Cole's paintings, most notably in his greatest work, The Oxbow (1836).  Even as he extolled the progress and promise of his adopted country, Cole began to worry that the American Eden might become Paradise Lost. 

Lurking fears did not prevent Cole from taking the bold move of travelling to England in 1829, followed by a sojourn in Italy.  At this point in the exhibit timeline, the distinctive nature of Cole's achievement can truly be appreciated. Cole profited enormously from his studies in Europe but he went there as an already successful artist, the essential features of his oeuvre already well defined .

On display are an impressive array of paintings by Turner, Constable, John Martin and other contemporary artists whose works Cole studied. Cole met several of these English masters in person and we can trace influences on his evolving style. 

Turner, like Cole, incorporated moral lessons and historical references as the themes of his major paintings. Turner's Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps has a lot more snow than Hannibal and his elephants, but this famous painting certainly conveys Turner's obsessive thoughts on the "fallacies of hope."

J.M.W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, 1812

In keeping with Cole's experiences in England, the exhibit on view at the Met will travel to the National Gallery of Art in London during the summer of 2018.

While in England, Cole also studied the great harbor scene by the seventeenth century master, Claude Lorraine, Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula, 1641. This fabulous painting was one of the original anchors of the collection of the National Gallery, founded in 1824. Claude's masterpiece was a favorite of Turner's. It ranked high on Cole's list too, so high that when he visited Italy, he made a point to rent Claude's old studio. 

 Claude Lorraine, Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula, 1641

That feeling of self-assurance is significant. But the fact that Cole returned at all from Europe is more telling. The allure of Europe was hard to resist and many of America's greatest artists, Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley and Mather Brown, had traveled to the Old World, never to return. Cole came back. He was truly an American painter upon his return in 1832.

When Cole stepped-off the boat, he found that some of his fears for America were coming true. Industry was starting to replace agriculture, party politics was ramping-up, the  differences between North and South were proving  to be hard-set convictions not passing opinions. In Italy, Cole had seen and painted the ruins of a once-great republic, Rome. Might this be the eventual fate of the United States?

Thomas Cole, Aqueduct near Rome, 1832

Cole was not the only person who foresaw the future of the U.S. in the sun-bleached debris of ancient Rome. In 1834, a wealthy New York merchant, Lumen Reed, commissioned Cole to create a series of paintings showing the rise and fall of a classical civilization, a mix of fantasy and a close reading of Edward Gibbon's history of Rome's downfall. The resulting series, The Course of Empire, is displayed to spectacular effect in the Metropolitan's exhibit. I have seen The Course of Empire before, but never in such a striking way.

Beginning with The Savage State, in which tribal folk live in huts shaped like American Indian wig-wams, The Course of Empire proceeds to heights of material splendor, followed by destruction and desolation. Each of these brilliantly-realized paintings features a Gibraltar-like mountain peak. This distinctive massif appeared earlier in Scene from “The Last of the Mohicans.” Cole based its shape on sketches he had made of Mount Chocorua in New Hampshire.

While Cole painted this meditation on history, he was a work on his greatest single painting. It is one of the most important works in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum - which says a great deal. Cole gave a Turner-like title to his depiction of a meandering river:  View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow. 

Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm —The Oxbow,1836

The real subject of this inspiring painting is the retreat of the American frontier before the  advance of ax-wielding pioneers and the farming families who followed in their wake. We can see Cole himself in the detail of the painting which introduces this review. He sits at his easel, a few feet from his umbrella which is planted on the cliff-face like a regimental banner waving over a conquered redoubt. Cole shows himself painting the beginning of the end of the "savage state" which inwardly he found hard to relinquish.

According to meticulous research of The Oxbow, Cole also used the actual setting of this painting for The Course of Empire paintings. Cole made an oil study of the river valley, which he used to plot the location of the magnificent temples, monuments and piers. 

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire - The Consummation of Empire, 1835 - 1836

Whenever - or wherever - Cole and his patron, Lumen Reed, conceived the idea for their "rise and fall" series, contemporary events likely supplied some vivid details. On December 16, 1835, a fire from a warehouse in lower Manhattan, ignited an inferno that torched seventeen city blocks, including most of the financial district, of the city of New York. Remarkably only two people were killed but the conflagration may well have informed Cole's apocalyptic vision in The Course of Empire - Destruction.

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire - Destruction,1836

Sadly, Lumen Reed died in 1836 just as the paintings were being prepared for display. The Course of Empire was so well received that Cole painted a second landscape series, The River of Life. He was in the process of painting a third series when he died, suddenly, of pleurisy in 1848. He was only 47 years old and at the height of his powers.

Cole's sudden death was a heavy blow to American culture. Fortunately, Cole had begun training talented pupils like Frederic Edwin Church, whose works would take American painting to sublime heights. Furthermore, Cole's great friend, Asher B. Durand, picked up the  reigns of leadership and guided the Hudson River movement during its time as America's major school of art, the years just before and after the Civil War.

The moralizing content of Thomas Cole's paintings is out of favor today. Likewise, Durand's beautiful tribute to Cole, Kindred Spirits, seems impossibly remote from our experience of life in the over-urbanized twenty-first century. 

Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849

Yet, when we leave the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, we have only to look a short distance to see the welcoming "wilderness" of Central Park. From the rear entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a "river of life" view greets our eyes, in this case Fairmount Park and the Schuylkill River. Most American art museums are built adjacent to green spaces. And then, there is the National Park System, which preserves a wide swathe of the natural world for the enjoyment and inspiration of all U.S. citizens

None of these wondrous things  - art museums, urban green spaces and National Parks  - might ever have taken root in the United States except for the art-inspired journeys that Thomas Cole made across the Atlantic and his exploration into the soul of America.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                Photos courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Introductory Image

Detail of View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm —The Oxbow, 1836, by Thomas Cole (American, 1801-1848) Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 76 in. (130.8 x 193 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908 (08.228). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mathew B. Brady, American, (1823?-1896) Thomas Cole,c.1845, Photograph, Half-plate daguerreotype on silver-coated copper plate. Plate: 13.7 x 10.2cm (5 3/8 x 4") Credit Line  National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Edith Cole Silberstein Object number NPG.76.11

Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848) Scene from “The Last of the Mohicans,” Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund, 1827. Oil on canvas, 25 3/8 x 35 1/8 in. (64.5 x 89.1 cm). Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, Bequest of Alfred Smith (1868.3). Photo: Allen Phillips\Wadsworth Atheneum

Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848)  From Nature, 1823. Ink on paper, 9 5/8 x 7 1/4 in. (24.4 x 18.4 cm). Albany Institute of History & Art, Gift of Edith Cole (Mrs. Howard) Silberstein (1965.68.1) Photography provided by the Albany Institute of History & Art

Detail of View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow, 1836, by Thomas Cole (American, 1801-1848)

Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775– 1851) Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, 1812. Oil on canvas, 57 1/2 × 93 1/2 in. (146 × 237.5 cm). Tate Britain, London, Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 (N00490). © Tate, London 2017

Claude Lorrain (French, 1604/5?–1682) Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula, 1641. Oil on canvas, 44 1/2 x 58 3/4 in. (112.9 x 149 cm). The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1824 (NG30). © The National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY

Thomas Cole (American,1801–1848) Aqueduct near Rome, 1832. Oil on canvas, 45 x 68 1/8 in. (114.3 x 173 cm). Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, University purchase, Bixby Fund, by exchange, 1987 (WU 1987.4)

Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848) View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836. Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 76 in. (130.8 x 193 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908 (08.228). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848) The Course of the Empire: The Consummation of Empire, 1835–36. Oil on canvas, 51 1/4 x 76 in. (130.2 x 193 cm). New-York Historical Society, Gift of The New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts (1858.3). Digital image created by Oppenheimer Editions

Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848 ) The Course of Empire: Destruction,1836. Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 x 63 1/2 in. (99.7 x 161.3 cm). New-York Historical Society, Gift of The New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts (1858.4). Digital image created by Oppenheimer Editions


Asher Brown Durand (American,1796–1886) Kindred Spirits, 1849. Oil on canvas, 46 x 36 in. (111.8 x 91.4 cm). Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (2010.106). Photography by The Metropolitan Museum of Art