Thomas Cole and Lamenting the Hudson River Valley
“I look a walk up the Catskills . . . where the railroad is now in the making. This was once a favorite walk but the charm of quietness and solitude are gone-it is still lovely-man cannot remove the mountains he has not yet falled all the woods and the streams will have its course. If men were not blind and insensible to the beauty of nature the great works necessary for the purpose of commerce might be carried on without destroying it, and at times might even contribute to charms by rendering her more accessible-but it is not so.” Thomas Cole, 1836 |
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Thomas Cole: Lamenting the Disappearance of the American Wilderness in Art and Writing
Essay by
R. A. Schultz
R. A. Schultz
Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, not only painted the American landscape; he also wrote poetry and essays expressing the Nineteenth Century Romantic ideals on appreciating the beauty of the American wilderness.[1] Born on February 1, 1801 in Bolton le Moors, Lancashire, England, Cole developed wilderness appreciation from exploring the English countryside and reading stories about the beauty of North American forests, rivers, lakes, and plains.[2] In the spring of 1818, James Cole, Thomas’s father, decided to move his family to America in search of the new opportunities. Upon arriving in Philadelphia, Cole’s father opened a dry good store, but after learning of better opportunities out West, his parents moved to Steubenville, Ohio leaving Thomas behind.[3]
Cole’s real first taste of the wilderness wonders of this new land occurred during a trip to St. Eustatia in what is now known as Haiti. The scenic beauty of the wild shoreline, cliffs and rocks of the island “moved his heart with magical love and astonishment.”[4] Upon Cole’s return to Philadelphia, he moved to Steubenville, Ohio and took up the trade of engraving wallpaper designs for his father’s factory.[5] In his free time, he loved to explore the wilderness of the Alleghenies. During his time in Ohio, Cole realized that he wanted to become an artist. From 1820 to 1825 Cole studied and sketched out a career, dabbling in portraits, history and genre paintings.[6] Cole always struggled with painting figures and perspectives, so he decided to pursue the art of landscape painting.[7] After moving to New York City in 1824, Cole caught his first glimpse of the distant cliffs of the Palisades from the Hudson River. Cole yearned to earn enough money to travel and explore the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains. In 1825, the opportunity presented itself and Cole began his journey by steamboat along the Hudson River Valley to the Catskill Mountain region.[8]
Cole explored and sketched the Catskill Mountains wilderness for several weeks. Once he returned to New York City, Cole painted three landscapes: The View of Fort Putnam, Lake with Dead Trees, and The Falls of the Caterskill. He displayed these paintings in a shop, selling each one for twenty-five dollars.[9] Colonel John Trumbull, the director of the American Academy of Fine Arts, saw Cole’s paintings for sale and purchased one. Impressed with his work, Trumbull quickly introduced Cole to the New York art world, launching his successful career as an American landscape painter.[10] With his new fame, Cole formed close friendships with fellow American Romantics, artists Asher B. Durand and author’s William Cullen Bryant and James Fenimore Cooper.[11]
Americans of Cole’s generation lived through the settlement of new western territories, a rapid expansion of the economy and racial inequality.[12] Three years after Cole’s rise to fame, Andrew Jackson became elected as President of the United States. During Jackson’s presidency, the agrarian economy that originally produced crops for household use expanded into a market-oriented economy.[13] The continued expansion of farming and clearing the land for profit contributed to the aesthetic and environmental devastation of the American wilderness.[14] Cole wrote in his journal in August of 1836: “They desecrated whatever they touch- They cut down the forests with all the wantonness for which there is no excuse, even gain.”[15]
In 1833, Cole wrote to his patron and friend, wealthy merchant Lumen Reed, about a new series of paintings. Cole wanted to create five landscape paintings exploring and lamenting about the fate of nature and the future of the American wilderness.[16] He wrote to Lumen Reed on September 18, 1833: “The philosophy of my subject is drawn from the history of the past, wherein we see how nations have risen from the savage state to that of power and glory, and then fallen, and become extinct. Natural scenery has also its changes- the hours of the day and the seasons of the year.”[17] Cole’s resulting work, Course of the Empire, 1836 expressed his concern about the destruction wilderness and the need for Americans’ to appreciate its natural scenery.
In 1829, Cole made his first of two trips to Europe where he explored and painted the European wilderness. While in awe of the offerings of Europe’s wilderness, he believed America still possessed the “most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive” wilderness scenery.[18] Several years later he wrote about his experience regarding Europe’s forests. In January of 1836 he published “Essay on American Scenery” in American Monthly Magazine. His essay compared the destruction of Europe’s wilderness to the industrialization of the wilderness areas along the American East Coast. Cole wrote in his essay: “Where the wolf howls, the plough shall glisten; on the gray crag shall rise temple and tower.” He went on stating: “Yet I cannot but express my sorrow that the beauty of such landscapes are quickly passing away – the ravages of the axe are daily increasing – the most noble scenes are made desolate, and often with a wantonness and behavior scarcely credible in a civilized nation.”[19]
In the spring of 1836 construction began on the Catskill and Canajoharie Railroad.[20] On March 28, 1836, Cole wrote to Luman Reed about the destruction. Calling the axe men “tree destroyers,” he wrote: “They are cutting down all the trees in the beautiful valley on which I have looked so often with a loving eye.”[21] The destruction of the wilderness continued to cause Cole alarm. By August of 1836 he again wrote in his journal:
“I look a walk up the Catskills . . . where the railroad is now in the making. This was once a favorite walk but the charm of quietness and solitude are gone-it is still lovely-man cannot remove the mountains he has not yet falled all the woods and the streams will have its course. If men were not blind and insensible to the beauty of nature the great works necessary for the purpose of commerce might be carried on without destroying it, and at times might even contribute to charms by rendering her more accessible-but it is not so.”[22]
Throughout the late 1830s into the 1840s, Cole continued to write and paint about his concerns over his beloved Catskills and Hudson River Valley. In 1841, Cole published his poem The Lament of the Forest. Speaking through Cole, the American forest lamented about its continued destruction.[23] Cole wrote: “Before the virgin breast of earth was scarred by steel, or granite masses rent from rocks to build vast Thebes or old Persepolis, our arms were clasped about the hills, our locks shaded the streams that loved us, and our green tops were resting places for the weary clouds.”[24] Cole also completed his last series of paintings. The Voyage of Life consisted of four paintings portraying man’s life as part of the wilderness. Poorly received, Cole’s Voyage series became the source of humor for fellow artists. At a Sketch Club meeting artists were given the opportunity to sketch an illustration to theme “just in time.” William Sidney Mount, a fellow Hudson River School artist, drew a sketch of an angel lifting an old man by the collar, saving him from the devil just in time. This caricature produced a good laugh for everyone, except Cole, who appeared to be horrified.[25]
Cole, struggling with his frustration over patrons’ limitation on his creativity, finances, and poor health, decided to return to Europe in 1841.[26] While in Rome, he wrote a letter to his wife Maria on their fifth wedding anniversary: “What strange leaves open in the book of life! Health, and the necessity of renovating my artistic feeling, and of gathering fresh materials for my profession, have dragged me away from home. My life will be burdened with sadness until I return to my wife and family.”[27] Cole returned to his family in New York in 1843. Seeking new patrons to finance his work, Cole approached one of his first patrons’ Daniel Wadsworth. Instead of offering to commission his work, Wadsworth suggested Cole take on a student instead.
On June 4, 1844 a young Frederic Edwin Church arrived at Catskill landing to meet his new art instructor. While exploring the Catskills, Cole educated Church on making studies for his paintings directly from nature. He apprenticed under Cole for over a year, and then Church departed for New York City where he embarked on his own successful career as a landscape artist.[28] After his departure, Cole continued to struggle with financial and health issues. By 1846 he began working on his last series of paintings, The Cross and the World. Unlike his series The Course of the Empire, Cole’s last series of the American wilderness promised spiritual redemption instead of destruction.[29] Cole never completed the first painting of this series. On February 6, 1848, he became ill and by the eleventh, Cole stated “I want to be quiet” and died.[30] William Cullen Bryant concluded his Funeral Oration on Cole’s life stating he “will be reverenced in future years as a great master in art; he has opened a way in which only men endued with rare strength of genius can follow him.”[31]
Bibliography
Cole, Thomas. "Essay on North American Scenery." The American Monthly Magazine, (1836): 1-12.
—. "Journal 1834-1838. VP 2, July 1838 to 1848." Thomas Cole Papers. New York: New York State Library. Accessed on March 5, 2017. http://nysl.cloudapp.net/awweb/main.jsp?flag=collection&smd=1&cl=all_lib&field11=122519843&tm=1488828584521&itype=advs&menu=on.
Cole, Thomas. "The Lament of the Forest." Knickerbocker, (June 1841): 516-19.
Miller, Angela. "The Fate of Wilderness in American Landscape Art: The Dilemmas of "Nature's Nation"." In American Wilderness: A New History, edited by Michael Lewis, 91-112. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Millhouse, Barbara Babcock. American Wilderness, The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting. Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press, Corp., 2007.
Nash, Roderick Frazier. Wilderness and the American Mind Fifth Ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
Noble, Louise Legrand. The Life Works of Thomas Cole. Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corp., 1997.
Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Stansell, Christine and Sean Wilentz. "Cole's America: An Introduction." In Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. and Alan Wallach Truettner, 3-22. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Sweeney, J. Gray. "The Advantages of Genius and Virtue: Thomas Cole's Influence, 1848-1858." In Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. and Alan Wallach Truettner, 113-136. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Tindall, George Brown and David Emory Shi. America A Narrative History, Ninth Edition, Volume 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.
Wallach, Alan. "Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire." In Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by Wiilliam H. and Alan Wallach Truettner, 23-112. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Footnotes
[1] Louis Legrand Noble, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, edited by Elliot S. Vesell, (Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corp., 1964), xv.
[2] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 4.
[3] Barbara Babcock Millhouse, American Wilderness, The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting, (Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corp., 2007), 2.
[4] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 8.
[5] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 5.
[6] Alan Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 26.
[7] Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” 28.
[8] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 7.
[9] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 34-35.
[10] Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” 24.
[11] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 234.
[12] Christine Stansell and Sean Wilentz, “Cole’s America: An Introduction,” in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 4.
[13] George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, America A Narrative History, Ninth Edition, Volume 1, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), 441.
[14] Angela Miller, “The Fate of Wilderness in American Landscape Art: The Dilemmas of ‘Nature’s Nation,” in American Wilderness: A New History, edited by Michael Lewis, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 99.
[15] Thomas Cole, “Journal 1834-1838. VP 2, July 1838 to 1848,” Thomas Cole Papers, New York State Library, New York, accessed on March 5, 2017, http://nysl.cloudapp.net/awweb/main.jsp?flag=collection&smd=1&cl=all_lib&field11=122519843&tm=1488828584521&itype=advs&menu=on.
[16] Miller, “The Fate of Wilderness in American Landscape Art,” 95.
[17] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 129.
[18] Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind Fifth Ed., (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 81.
[19] Thomas Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” American Monthly Magazine, 1 (January 1836): 12.
[20] Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” 73.
[21] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 160-61.
[22] Cole, “Journal 1834-1838,” 49.
[23] Nash, Wilderness, 97.
[24] Thomas Cole, “The Lament of the Forest,” Knickerbocker, (June, 1841): 519.
[25] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 7.
[26] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 221.
[27] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 232.
[28] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 63-64.
[29] Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, (New York, Oxford University Press, 2007), 97.
[30] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 306.
[31] J. Gray Sweeney, “The Advantages of Genius and Virtue: Thomas Cole’s Influence, 1848-58,” in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 113.
Cole’s real first taste of the wilderness wonders of this new land occurred during a trip to St. Eustatia in what is now known as Haiti. The scenic beauty of the wild shoreline, cliffs and rocks of the island “moved his heart with magical love and astonishment.”[4] Upon Cole’s return to Philadelphia, he moved to Steubenville, Ohio and took up the trade of engraving wallpaper designs for his father’s factory.[5] In his free time, he loved to explore the wilderness of the Alleghenies. During his time in Ohio, Cole realized that he wanted to become an artist. From 1820 to 1825 Cole studied and sketched out a career, dabbling in portraits, history and genre paintings.[6] Cole always struggled with painting figures and perspectives, so he decided to pursue the art of landscape painting.[7] After moving to New York City in 1824, Cole caught his first glimpse of the distant cliffs of the Palisades from the Hudson River. Cole yearned to earn enough money to travel and explore the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains. In 1825, the opportunity presented itself and Cole began his journey by steamboat along the Hudson River Valley to the Catskill Mountain region.[8]
Cole explored and sketched the Catskill Mountains wilderness for several weeks. Once he returned to New York City, Cole painted three landscapes: The View of Fort Putnam, Lake with Dead Trees, and The Falls of the Caterskill. He displayed these paintings in a shop, selling each one for twenty-five dollars.[9] Colonel John Trumbull, the director of the American Academy of Fine Arts, saw Cole’s paintings for sale and purchased one. Impressed with his work, Trumbull quickly introduced Cole to the New York art world, launching his successful career as an American landscape painter.[10] With his new fame, Cole formed close friendships with fellow American Romantics, artists Asher B. Durand and author’s William Cullen Bryant and James Fenimore Cooper.[11]
Americans of Cole’s generation lived through the settlement of new western territories, a rapid expansion of the economy and racial inequality.[12] Three years after Cole’s rise to fame, Andrew Jackson became elected as President of the United States. During Jackson’s presidency, the agrarian economy that originally produced crops for household use expanded into a market-oriented economy.[13] The continued expansion of farming and clearing the land for profit contributed to the aesthetic and environmental devastation of the American wilderness.[14] Cole wrote in his journal in August of 1836: “They desecrated whatever they touch- They cut down the forests with all the wantonness for which there is no excuse, even gain.”[15]
In 1833, Cole wrote to his patron and friend, wealthy merchant Lumen Reed, about a new series of paintings. Cole wanted to create five landscape paintings exploring and lamenting about the fate of nature and the future of the American wilderness.[16] He wrote to Lumen Reed on September 18, 1833: “The philosophy of my subject is drawn from the history of the past, wherein we see how nations have risen from the savage state to that of power and glory, and then fallen, and become extinct. Natural scenery has also its changes- the hours of the day and the seasons of the year.”[17] Cole’s resulting work, Course of the Empire, 1836 expressed his concern about the destruction wilderness and the need for Americans’ to appreciate its natural scenery.
In 1829, Cole made his first of two trips to Europe where he explored and painted the European wilderness. While in awe of the offerings of Europe’s wilderness, he believed America still possessed the “most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive” wilderness scenery.[18] Several years later he wrote about his experience regarding Europe’s forests. In January of 1836 he published “Essay on American Scenery” in American Monthly Magazine. His essay compared the destruction of Europe’s wilderness to the industrialization of the wilderness areas along the American East Coast. Cole wrote in his essay: “Where the wolf howls, the plough shall glisten; on the gray crag shall rise temple and tower.” He went on stating: “Yet I cannot but express my sorrow that the beauty of such landscapes are quickly passing away – the ravages of the axe are daily increasing – the most noble scenes are made desolate, and often with a wantonness and behavior scarcely credible in a civilized nation.”[19]
In the spring of 1836 construction began on the Catskill and Canajoharie Railroad.[20] On March 28, 1836, Cole wrote to Luman Reed about the destruction. Calling the axe men “tree destroyers,” he wrote: “They are cutting down all the trees in the beautiful valley on which I have looked so often with a loving eye.”[21] The destruction of the wilderness continued to cause Cole alarm. By August of 1836 he again wrote in his journal:
“I look a walk up the Catskills . . . where the railroad is now in the making. This was once a favorite walk but the charm of quietness and solitude are gone-it is still lovely-man cannot remove the mountains he has not yet falled all the woods and the streams will have its course. If men were not blind and insensible to the beauty of nature the great works necessary for the purpose of commerce might be carried on without destroying it, and at times might even contribute to charms by rendering her more accessible-but it is not so.”[22]
Throughout the late 1830s into the 1840s, Cole continued to write and paint about his concerns over his beloved Catskills and Hudson River Valley. In 1841, Cole published his poem The Lament of the Forest. Speaking through Cole, the American forest lamented about its continued destruction.[23] Cole wrote: “Before the virgin breast of earth was scarred by steel, or granite masses rent from rocks to build vast Thebes or old Persepolis, our arms were clasped about the hills, our locks shaded the streams that loved us, and our green tops were resting places for the weary clouds.”[24] Cole also completed his last series of paintings. The Voyage of Life consisted of four paintings portraying man’s life as part of the wilderness. Poorly received, Cole’s Voyage series became the source of humor for fellow artists. At a Sketch Club meeting artists were given the opportunity to sketch an illustration to theme “just in time.” William Sidney Mount, a fellow Hudson River School artist, drew a sketch of an angel lifting an old man by the collar, saving him from the devil just in time. This caricature produced a good laugh for everyone, except Cole, who appeared to be horrified.[25]
Cole, struggling with his frustration over patrons’ limitation on his creativity, finances, and poor health, decided to return to Europe in 1841.[26] While in Rome, he wrote a letter to his wife Maria on their fifth wedding anniversary: “What strange leaves open in the book of life! Health, and the necessity of renovating my artistic feeling, and of gathering fresh materials for my profession, have dragged me away from home. My life will be burdened with sadness until I return to my wife and family.”[27] Cole returned to his family in New York in 1843. Seeking new patrons to finance his work, Cole approached one of his first patrons’ Daniel Wadsworth. Instead of offering to commission his work, Wadsworth suggested Cole take on a student instead.
On June 4, 1844 a young Frederic Edwin Church arrived at Catskill landing to meet his new art instructor. While exploring the Catskills, Cole educated Church on making studies for his paintings directly from nature. He apprenticed under Cole for over a year, and then Church departed for New York City where he embarked on his own successful career as a landscape artist.[28] After his departure, Cole continued to struggle with financial and health issues. By 1846 he began working on his last series of paintings, The Cross and the World. Unlike his series The Course of the Empire, Cole’s last series of the American wilderness promised spiritual redemption instead of destruction.[29] Cole never completed the first painting of this series. On February 6, 1848, he became ill and by the eleventh, Cole stated “I want to be quiet” and died.[30] William Cullen Bryant concluded his Funeral Oration on Cole’s life stating he “will be reverenced in future years as a great master in art; he has opened a way in which only men endued with rare strength of genius can follow him.”[31]
Bibliography
Cole, Thomas. "Essay on North American Scenery." The American Monthly Magazine, (1836): 1-12.
—. "Journal 1834-1838. VP 2, July 1838 to 1848." Thomas Cole Papers. New York: New York State Library. Accessed on March 5, 2017. http://nysl.cloudapp.net/awweb/main.jsp?flag=collection&smd=1&cl=all_lib&field11=122519843&tm=1488828584521&itype=advs&menu=on.
Cole, Thomas. "The Lament of the Forest." Knickerbocker, (June 1841): 516-19.
Miller, Angela. "The Fate of Wilderness in American Landscape Art: The Dilemmas of "Nature's Nation"." In American Wilderness: A New History, edited by Michael Lewis, 91-112. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Millhouse, Barbara Babcock. American Wilderness, The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting. Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press, Corp., 2007.
Nash, Roderick Frazier. Wilderness and the American Mind Fifth Ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
Noble, Louise Legrand. The Life Works of Thomas Cole. Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corp., 1997.
Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Stansell, Christine and Sean Wilentz. "Cole's America: An Introduction." In Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. and Alan Wallach Truettner, 3-22. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Sweeney, J. Gray. "The Advantages of Genius and Virtue: Thomas Cole's Influence, 1848-1858." In Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. and Alan Wallach Truettner, 113-136. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Tindall, George Brown and David Emory Shi. America A Narrative History, Ninth Edition, Volume 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.
Wallach, Alan. "Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire." In Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by Wiilliam H. and Alan Wallach Truettner, 23-112. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Footnotes
[1] Louis Legrand Noble, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, edited by Elliot S. Vesell, (Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corp., 1964), xv.
[2] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 4.
[3] Barbara Babcock Millhouse, American Wilderness, The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting, (Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corp., 2007), 2.
[4] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 8.
[5] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 5.
[6] Alan Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 26.
[7] Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” 28.
[8] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 7.
[9] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 34-35.
[10] Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” 24.
[11] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 234.
[12] Christine Stansell and Sean Wilentz, “Cole’s America: An Introduction,” in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 4.
[13] George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, America A Narrative History, Ninth Edition, Volume 1, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), 441.
[14] Angela Miller, “The Fate of Wilderness in American Landscape Art: The Dilemmas of ‘Nature’s Nation,” in American Wilderness: A New History, edited by Michael Lewis, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 99.
[15] Thomas Cole, “Journal 1834-1838. VP 2, July 1838 to 1848,” Thomas Cole Papers, New York State Library, New York, accessed on March 5, 2017, http://nysl.cloudapp.net/awweb/main.jsp?flag=collection&smd=1&cl=all_lib&field11=122519843&tm=1488828584521&itype=advs&menu=on.
[16] Miller, “The Fate of Wilderness in American Landscape Art,” 95.
[17] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 129.
[18] Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind Fifth Ed., (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 81.
[19] Thomas Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” American Monthly Magazine, 1 (January 1836): 12.
[20] Wallach, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” 73.
[21] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 160-61.
[22] Cole, “Journal 1834-1838,” 49.
[23] Nash, Wilderness, 97.
[24] Thomas Cole, “The Lament of the Forest,” Knickerbocker, (June, 1841): 519.
[25] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 7.
[26] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 221.
[27] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 232.
[28] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 63-64.
[29] Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, (New York, Oxford University Press, 2007), 97.
[30] Noble, ed. by Elliot S. Vesell, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, 306.
[31] J. Gray Sweeney, “The Advantages of Genius and Virtue: Thomas Cole’s Influence, 1848-58,” in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, edited by William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 113.
Further Reading:
The Lament of the Forest, PDF | |
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