In the 1820s Thomas Cole (1801 to 1848), born in England, began painting the wild Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River in New York. Other painters followed him for half a century. The group never had a formal school; the name Hudson River School was coined in the 1870s, at first dismissively. They brought the Romantic sublime to the American landscape.
Looking closely: The Oxbow
Describe. From a mountain top we look down on a great loop (an oxbow) of the Connecticut River. On the left are storm clouds, a shattered tree and dark wild forest; on the right, sunlit fields, farms and smoke from chimneys. In the foreground, if you look hard, Cole painted himself at his easel. Analyze. A diagonal divides the canvas: dark and stormy at the left, light and calm at the right. The river's curve leads the eye across the valley. Interpret. The painting sets wilderness beside cultivated land just as the storm passes. Viewers have read it as a celebration of settlement, as a warning about what is lost, or as both; Cole wrote elsewhere of his worry about the cutting of American forests.
Key idea
Why it works
Common mistake
Worked example: Observed or composed?
- The parts were sketched on the spot, from life.
- They come from different places.
- Bierstadt combined them into one ideal scene.
Answer: It is composed in the studio from separate observed sketches.